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Morning all, how was your weekend?
I ended up finishing Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and getting up to Aldia’s Keep in SoTFS – my first Dark Souls 2 playthrough. Is it just me or are the bosses in Dark Souls 2 easier and more boring than in other soulsborne games?
Yeah, I’m less negative on Dark Souls 2 than some, but its boss design suuuuuuuuccckkkeeeeddddd. Like 80% of them can be beaten by sitting in their underarm, and the other 20% are cheap jerks in arenas filled with trash mobs (okay, it’s more like 60/20 with some decent ones making up the rest).
The Royal Rat Authority – enough said
Dev A: This boss fight feels kinda samey.
Dev 1: Throw in more trash mobs.
Dav E: More trash mobs??
Dev I: MORE TRASH MOBS!!!!
As someone who prefered Dark Souls 2 over 1, yeah the bosses aren’t that great. Most of them are some sort of knight, which I guess fits the setting of the game but isn’t particularly exciting.
I feel the same. Overall the game seems more refined than 1, but I was able to beat Velstadt the first time as he was more just a remix of other bosses. I can’t wait to see some more of the interesting ones that DSIII has already previewed
Morning all! Thought I’d finally managed to get the first post, but @edc just crushed my dreams. Thanks, guy.
Hope the weekend was exciting and/or relaxed. I managed to talk my girlfriend down from getting a cat (which I would be horribly allergic to) to getting guinea pigs, so we went out and bought all the necessary stuffs to keep them alive and happy. We are adopting them from a research lab, so here’s hoping they aren’t secretly murderers a la Spooky Fish!
GUINEA PIGS!
Love me some Guinea Pigs, even if they’re garbage pets that don’t do anything but complain about not being fed.
As long as they don’t make my eyes water like Niagra, my nose run like Usain Bolt, and don’t constantly drive me to pray for death… I’m happy.
Oh man Guinea Pigs.. I had them when I was 8 or so. Ended up with a few dozen on accident one year. Then the local carpet python helped relieve us of a bunch of them & then we had an extremely cold winter & then it knocked off most of the rest. They’re pretty rad, but watch out for their teeth, they can do some serious damage to your skin & then you bleed like a stuck pig >_> they can also be pretty chill & have a rad personality.
Edit: I use to have some pretty serious allergies to our cats, but our guinea pigs never seemed to trigger them, so you should be sweet, maybe?
Yeah I’ve done a bit of reading up and that’s the general consensus, it’s something specific to cats so hopefully I should be fine… and if not, I’ve sunk a whole stack of cash into equipment for nothing!
Maybe. We used to have guinea pigs and while it’s so long ago I can barely remember, I feel like they may have made me end up getting all sniffly. Not sure if that was from the lucerne we gave them (which I also can’t remember if that was a thing, or if that was just the rabbits), or from the animals themselves. I feel like I used to get sniffly when having to deal with their cage, so who knows.
But, uh. Yeah. Good luck!
Morning everybody, the new PC case has arrived!
Now all that’s left is the graphics card and RAM (Which is currently on order) then the building begins, it’s going to be beautiful! 😀
What’re the specs? Having built a system less than 12m ago, I have a 0% chance of building a new one any time soon, so I need to live vicariously through you guys.
Board: ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6+
OS: Windows 10 Pro Retail on USB
CPU: i7 6700 Quad Core 3.4GHz
RAM: Kingston 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 2800MHz HyperX Savage
Drives: Kingston 240GB SSD + 1TB hard drive
Graphics: Geforce GTX 970
Monitors: 2x BenQ 24″W HD LEDs (1x RL2450H and 1x RL2455HM as I got them over a year apart)
Power: Thermaltake 750W DPS 80 Gold
Oh and if you want a look at the case, here you go!
I’ve gone all out with this cuz I want this to be great to celebrate 6 months of living in my own place that I’m not renting. 🙂
That case looks like it got stuck transforming from a tower into a freaking fighter jet…. 5/7 would buy.
It’s gorgeous, it’ll be my second Decepticon, Computron! Along with my carry bag with a Decepticon car badge on it, Bagatron
That case makes me think of my old A380. Turbines for all!
What was that?! I can’t hear you over the sound of these awesome turbines!
Can…can that case fly?
With these specs, I don’t see why not 😛
Just watch out that any small animals around the house don’t get sucked into those turbines.
Came second in a Netrunner tournament on the weekend by winning just one match. Each of the matches is made up of two games and if I’d won just won more game, I’d have won the whole tournament (or still come second on tiebreakers).
Funnily enough, two of those games were entirely winnable. One I lost because I was using a deck that typically tries to stop the other player from playing Netrunner and I tried to force that gameplan instead of playing a standard game of Netrunner and winning easily. Another I lost because my opponent could’ve run over me if he played more aggressively, so I tried to bluff my way into not letting him play Netrunner instead of just trying to win normally.
Moral of the story: to win a Netrunner tournament, sometimes you have to play Netrunner.
The “what are you playing” mobile article inspired me to finally give mobile games a go. I’ve always had Tetris on my phone or 3ds when travelling, but on recommendations in the article I gave Trials Frontier and Real Racing 3 a go. Have to say I was impressed with the freemium models used in those games. Regarding paid apps, anyone here had/have the Chrono Trigger port for iOS and care to share views on it?
Morning!
Good weekend – couple of ales friday night for a friend’s birthday, wound up sitting up with my wife watching Ben Folds Live At MySpace when we got home. Saturday was a BBQ for a different birthday…
Rise of the Tomb Raider still really good, but I spent more of the weekend in Elite.
Did some long range smuggling for the first time. Good money, and not as hard to avoid being scanned by the cops as I thought. And then I went out to the Pleiades nebula, a couple of hundred light years outside the main bubble, and to one of the “barnacle” sites – an alien organic structure that looks to be some sort of biotech mining system. Landed right next to it. Pretty cool. Also was in the Mobius PvE group’s team speak, and there was channel called “We’re going to the Lagoon Nebula”. Couple of guys in there who had not done any significant exploring before, but had a pair of Anacondas. So they went to the barnacle sites I mentioned before, then out to Barnard’s Loop and the Orion Nebula. Decided they were enjoying the group explore, so looped out round the lowest edge of the galaxy and then back up to Lagoon. We swapped some exploring info as I’ve been to Lagoon before, and told them about Thor’s Eye, so they headed there while trying to decide which way to go next! 🙂
Yes. Yes indeed. That’s how I feel every time I get a new ship in the game…
I finished Rise of the Tomb Raider (not 100%) on the weekend! Overall I enjoyed it, though as with the first game, the combat encounters started to wear on me by the end. I was excited when I read people say it has more tombs than the last game, but they seemed to be shorter this time around, so I was disappointed, since the tomb puzzles are my favourite part of the 2013 reboot.
Yeah, I can imagine that’ll be the case.
So… Reading the Fallout 4 patch notes for 1.3 made me think it’s time to get back and go past the grind, and finally go to diamond city after 50 hours of play.
I read that you get a house you can customise.I reach the outer gates, and what is this? Different looking characters? Real dialogue? Actual motion captured body language to go with that specific dialogue?
It’s a little jarring after 50 hours of generic settler-bots as my primary character interaction. Also a bit weird to have such a difference between these bits and the entire rest of the game.
Anyway, burned through a bunch of story, got as far as the
memory sequence, built a new holding building for my power armour collection in sanctuary, and I’m now at level 38 so not far off topping out on the crafting skills for the best weapons / armour.A question about theft – if I see something that I want, like I really want it more than the other guy, is it forever tarnished in red as a stolen item like every previous Bethesda open world (at least oblivion/Fallout 3/skyrim)?
I want the
X1 helmet on the brotherhood shipbut I have no idea if there’ll ever be a legit way to obtain it since the vendor doesn’t offer that right now.Oh and spoiler: the patched version is far more glitchy for me than the launch version. Disappearing hair, dodgy shadows, randomly missing textures, randomly vibrating objects and things just spontaneously bouncing around the place. Not sure why I expected the patches to make things better since Fallout 3 didn’t work that way either.
Regarding the stolen item, not sure if you can wash it or not but you can get that thing elsewhere…
‘Wash’?
I’m a bit behind the times since I’ve basically done nothing but explore and build up settlements. Inefficiently.
Wash as in make an item clean 😛
I haven’t tested it in F4, but in previous games you could reverse-pickpocket (sneak and put the item in someone’s inventory) and then kill them and remove the tag. You might be able to reverse-pickpocket a merchant and then buy it off them?
In Elder Scrolls games it was way easier. You can fence stolen items and buy them back clean.
I’m happy with being able to get it elsewhere. For now. Good to know about that trick though.
So apparently GW has well and truly brought their Age of Sigmar pricing model to 40k now… Dear god..
Case and point – New wulfen have been release… $100 for 5 models!!!
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-AU/Warhammer-40-000?N=102254+4294967192Ν=product.repositoryId&qty=12&sorting=phl&view=table&_requestid=18606702
Compare this with the other 5 man units already available, the long fangs and the wolf guard, at $45 and $42 respectively.
The Space Wolves Wolf pack, at 10 models, is $60.
The Blood claws set, which builds 15 models is $85. 15 models and still $15 short of the $100 price of the Wulfen.
You wants to be able to play those wulfen in game? That will be another $125 for the rule book, or $320 for the special edition.
What sort of insanity is this?
The biggest problem is they keep doing it because ‘tards keep buying it…
Eugh, why does the 40k lore have to be so damn compelling. I swear, despite having multiple armies I never really played all that much, but I kept getting sucked back in because I’d read some new lore tidbit and fall down the rabbit hole and oh god I just sold a kidney to buy another blister pack
I have to keep stopping myself from starting my own Necron army because I know I won’t use it much… but they’re bloody Necrons! D’:
I have like… half a necron army stashed somewhere, but I lost the other half in a move and I know I’ll never play with it but yeah… they’re bloody Necrons, and if I don’t help slake the Nightbringer’s thirst then who will?
This is the exact problem I have.
This is why i started playing games like relic and conquest to try and have a less-expensive filling of the 40k money hole, but I think it may only make it worse.
I almost have a complete cityscape table now too, despite only playing very rarely, and having more minis in my pile of shame than i am willing to admit.
That’s why I started playing the RPGs. I only have about 1000 points of second-hand Eldar so not even close to an army but I can’t be bothered assembling, painting, and building the rest of it. That’s expensive and time-consuming and I’m mostly just lazy.
You know, 1000 points actually isn’t bad.
I know they are trying to push people into 2000 point armies these days, but some of the fastest and most fun games can be played in just 850 points
Games Workshop: It’s a good long term deal because we’ll raise the prices again soon!
Well yeah – they have a price rise just about every fin year. With their new director and current pricing trends i expect at least a 5% increase across the board.
That’s why everybody just switched to Warmachine.
As far as price per mini goes, warmachine isn’t much better – you just need much smaller armies, which is where the real cost saving goes.
Colossals are GW level expensive, for sure.
The difference is that you may be able to say that the Warmachine ones are more expensive due to the material (usually resin and metal) compared to the plastic minis from GW.
In fact, most miniature games (apart from the things from mantic) are really quite expensive… but GW is certainly leading the way in insanity
Forza horizon 2 has an unskippable live action intro so full of coachella douchebaggery that I almost gave up before the cars showed up.
But I refused to let another half hour of installing and a giant-arse patch get the better of me.
Once the tassle-clad, trust fund babies got out of the way it seemed a lot like test drive unlimited.
Then it was declared that I wouldn’t be racing against ai, and I thought “cool, multiplayer!”. The next breath from the ceaseless voice over marketed the word drivatar at me with no hint of sarcasm.
I can’t stand any of the people in this racing game. How is that a thing?
Hi, TAY.
Picked up Dragon Age: Inquisition GOTY Edition and Crysis on Saturday, as they were on sale.
You sure are a crazy guy.
Slow down there, buddy.
Dragon Age is pretty great, although it does have the problem as being released around the same time as Witcher 3.
I find it funny that DA2 and TW2 ended up being compared a lot because they came out at the same time, and then years later both their sequels also came out around the same time and they’re both open world games. It’s like the two series are fated to clash.
First Crysis?
Yep.
Might actually run OK these days… I should reinstall.
Morning Peeps!
Just a repost from yesterday for those that missed it!
Anyone thinking of buying ARK: Survival Evolved?
if you subscribe to Humble Bundle Monthly for $12, you’ll get the game, plus this months Bundle. Then you can cancel your subscription if you want!
I’ve been meaning to get back into that. Usually I think crafting/survival games are garbage but DINOSAURS!
I plan to get back in to that game one day, but things keep coming up.
just bought it yesterday, it is SO much fun!
My cousin had another baby a couple days ago. It’s a girl. Everything is going well for the both of them. It’s nice to see the extended family growing.
Only thing is since it’s a girl it means it’s not going to like me until it’s about 3 years old. It’s been that way with all the babies in the family. All the girls don’t want anything to do with me until they’re around that age, after which they won’t be able to get enough of me. With the boys though they’re always cool with me straight away. I guess it’s just some sort of biological thing that baby girls prefer to be around other women. Or maybe they just don’t like the sound of my voice. I dunno.
Did anyone buy the Metal Gear Solid V Collector’s Edition?
I’m thinking of buying it at $190 but is it really worth spending that amount of money for an extra Blu-ray, physical map and a small plastic hand?
Honestly, I didn’t like the game enough to splash out that kind of money on it. The gameplay is good, but the story and ethos are kind of rubbish.
Have you played it yet?
Funny thing is, I haven’t played many of the Metal Gear games!
I’ve only finished Metal Gear Solid on the GBC and only played bits of the original Metal Gear (MSX) and Metal Gear Solid (PS1).
I’ve got the Metal Gear Solid Legacy Collection on my Pile of Shame and was thinking of adding this MGSV CE to the pile.
Maybe I should just get the standalone game instead…
Got a query for anybody who’s had it happen to them. Any help could be appreciated.
Over the weekend Paypal limited access to my account. I had thought it was related to suspicious activity but thankfully that was not the case. $300 spent on Steam over the course of one week, I will own that no worries.
Upon looking at the Resolution Centre, Paypal is asking I:
give them points of ID
proof of address
confirm I am not linked to political persons or parties
I can’t do anything without coughing up this information, anybody hear of anything like this before?
Thanks in advance.
PS. It’s absolutely legitimate.
Give them a call and ask them to explain what has triggered this… my guess is that your spending patterns have probably drastically changed in a short period of time? (ie spending 300 on steam one week, as opposed to 0 every other week?) probablyh just trying to ensure its not a hijacking. you have to understand that technically, they are a bank…
Actually they are pretty far from being a bank. They have more in common with the payment schemes like Visa than they do with CBA or Westpac
hence the the term technically. they hold, and currency exchange your funds, are an accepted payment method online as well as many establishments locally, and in some countries offer loan services with interest free periods. so i suppose they are a bit of a hybrid. i actually even have a $500 overdraft limit…
They are 100% definitely not a bank. They’re pretty much unregulated and can do whatever the fuck they want with your account or your money with very little you can do about it. They can be utter shits honestly.
I have heard of this happening (them asking for points of ID, proof of address, etc) before but I’ve never had it happen personally. I do know it’s something they employ as a security measure though.
Morning all! I hope you all had a weekend that was suitably epic sized.
Mine was a bit of fun, took my son to the Chinese New Year festival along southbank and he had a ball, being only 3 he was amazed by every little thing.
Saturday night, I went Karaoking with a bunch of others at Charlton’s bar and also partook in some shuffling of the feet they call dancing to some doof-doof music. Didn’t get home until almost 5 Sunday morning. I had to get up 4 hours later to do some adventure caving which was awesome fun! Saw some glow-worms, a cave lobster and a bunch of weird looking things they call spider crickets. Lots of tight spaces, lots of crawling and cuts and scrapes involved. Good times.
Proceeded home to crash into bed for a while to recover from the night before shenanigans, woke up did the lawn and cleaned the house. Overall, great weekend 5/5 would repeat again.
Are you trying to give me nightmares? Because that’s how you give me nightmares.
It was only beginner level caving but it was enormously fun! You should try it 🙂
It looks like I might be trying another cave where you have to abseil into the hole to get inside at a later date. Awwwww yeeeeeaaaahhhh
My family did a bunch of beginner caving years and years ago (one of which had a short abseil at the start), I think it was around the Blue Mountainsish, but I can’t quite remember. So much fun, need to add it on to the list of things to get back to when I stop being a blob.
I remember reading a story when I was alot younger about a spelunker getting stuck in the Devil’s Pinch… complete with photos. I couldn’t even make it through the article without breaking out into a sweat. I’m not claustrophobic or anything, but daaaaaaamn… shit is scary.
I mean, look at this. Look at it!
http://calidris.tripod.com/caving/B-Ncave4.jpg
hahaha yeah there was a few similar areas in the cave I went into. Nothing quite as small as those gaps though but small enough to almost get the helmet stuck lol. Good times!
You just take care of yourself Mr. Haggis. If you get caught in some cave-in, who’s going to tell awful jokes if we ever make it to page 6 again!?
yeah but getting stuck in a cave builds character, through, you know, delayed grottofication.
I should have expected this kind of becaveior from you…
I wasn’t planning on joining the fun… but I caved.
Mornin’ all. Had an okay weekend, worked all of it, but that’s okay. Worked with this girl from the BWS from in the next town, she was kind of a nightmare to work with sadly. She was doing the close shift & when I came in the next day she hadn’t filled or faced anything. So of course the other bloke I work with on Sundays spent the first 2 hours of his shift filling & facing everything, causing him not being able to do anything he would normally do on Sundays before I start at midday. Which would normally be fine, but we have a new manager starting today & we wanted to tidy the store a bit more so this new boss comes into a nice orderly store. Frustrates me to no end that no one wants to do their job properly when it’s not their store. But oh well. Close shift for me tonight & then opening the next two days /o\
My weekend wasn’t all lost though! I finally got around to getting the new Ghost album ‘Meliora’ cause I totally forgot it came out 6 months back. It’s pretty awesome. I also got to watch Metallica live from The Night Before the Superbowl, they sounded amazing. Then again I can’t remember when Metallica sounded crap live to be honest.
… how about when they were touring St. Anger?
You know what? I actually like the raw sound of St. Anger. I always thought it was a misunderstood album. But then again with the Some Kind of Monster documentary I get why people hate it. It’s probably my least favourite ‘Tallica album, but I don’t hate it. I also always thought if someone other than Metallica released St. Anger it would’ve been regarded as a masterpiece especially if it was some up & coming garage thrash band. But that’s just my opinion.
I 75% agree. It’s not a bad album, and it would have been better received if someone other than Metallica released it (although I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece)… but they did, and it’s not even in the same league as Ride the Lightning or any of their earlier stuff.
Oh totally, it’s not a masterpiece, Ideally I think they needed to make such an album.
RTL & KEA imo would be way better if they were cleaned up & re-released. I’ve really only enjoyed the songs from those albums when played live, they just sound better.
Hmm, you reckon? I really like the relatively shithouse production values on KEA, RTL and MOP, I think part of the problem with basically everything from the black album onwards is it doesn’t have that raw energy that the earlier albums had, which is at least in part due to the better production.
Honestly, if both were cleaned up, re-engineered & mastered properly, yeah man. I think both would sound great. Remember Metallica are still releasing on CD every original version of their albums, none of them have been digitally remastered etc for CD release, which is kind of a cop out, especially since they own the rights to their masters.
If you ask me, Master of Puppets has a great sound & production, it’s the first album where Metallica got serious & got real outside help, they got an awesome guitar & drum sound for that album. Bob Rock changed Metallica with the Black Album, which when you look back I think was a good thing. I don’t think Metallica would’ve blown up like they did if they just kept making Master of Puppets or Justice time & time again. For some bands making a similar sounding record every time & works well, look at AC/DC, it even works to a point for Slayer & to a much lesser extent Megadeth as well.
I also think Puppets is the best thrash album ever produced, also there’s Reign In Blood, Spreading The Disease & Peace Sells which are all remarkable album by the other 3 part of The Big Four.
Hmm.. yeah, you’re probably right. Couldn’t hurt to get a remastered version out anyway!
Yeah, I mean they’d only bank more money on re-issues that are remastered. Seems logical. Then again, Metallica & logic never seem to be go hand in hand. They do like the idea of money because it keeps their business rolling & the staff paid 😛
Weird double posts ftw (again)
Back in 2004 when Big Day Out sold out so fast they did a second show, I had tickets to the second show. Metallica came out 45 minutes late and by that point I wasn’t particularly impressed with them playing a super extended intro to Master of Puppets and telling me what city I’m in, so I left to catch the end of Magic Dirt.
Hey everyone.
I did a thing again
http://imgur.com/dds1dpq
I need to do the backs but for some reason, Mum and I have been super busy since having a car
oh nice, you ended up getting a car?
Yeah. We did. Mostly use it to go to highpoint
What’d you wind up getting?
A mitsubishi mirage sedan. Free tinted windows and metallic paint
Cool, I didn’t know the Mirage even came in the sedan, I’ve only ever seen hatchbacks.
We’re lucky it did. It was $13,990, so reasonable. It was 1 of 2 cars that could fit mum’s walker. We tried another 3 but none of them could accommodate.
The next cheapest would be a yaris sedan, but Yaris starts at $16,000 for a hatchback
I’m sure Sid is happy he gets to go for rides a lot more now.
Every single day. He’s currently sitting outside highpoint awaiting the next ride
Another weekend spent mostly out of the house. Wingman held a surprise party for a friend, having it Star Wars themed since apparently she’s super into that. I wasn’t sure what to dress as, though had the idea it might be funny to try and style my beard into a pair of Leia buns. But then I had a far better, lower-effort idea – shave my head, put on a pair of sunglasses, dress in black, a tiny bit of makeup, get out the clarinet and bam! Budget-grade fanfar player for Figrin D’an the Modal Nodes. Everyone else seemed to get out of their costumes pretty quickly though. Lame. Stayed in mine til I got home the next day, of course :P
Also, while at the bottle shop spotted a chilli beer. It was only a small bottle and cheap enough to figure hey why not give it a try. It had way more kick than I was expecting, though regardless of that I still couldn’t get even halfway through it. Just can’t do beer.
So, like, do you have to hand in your Australian citizenship along with your man-card, or how does that work? 😛
I was hoping that between the beard and having toast covered in enough vegemite to be unable to see the bread I would be safe from having to do either.
Love the Fanfar player outfit. The Modal Nodes are the best. I was in to them before they were cool, back when they were doing the pub circuit, you know? Before they got that Cantina residency.
Chilli beer? Interesting. When I had dinner at Papi Chulo a couple of months ago I tried a Mexican beer called Tecate, and it was served in the can but they rubbed the top the can in rock salt and chilli flakes, so when it was served you’d get a hint of salt and chilli with each sip. I thought it was interesting, but never thought of just putting chilli straight in the beer.
Hey now, that kind of party sounds like the opposite of lame.
You are such a goddam champion.
That costume is magic.
You just haven’t found the right beer for you yet.
Prospects aren’t looking great 😛
Have you tried a fruit lambic like a Framboise or Kriek?
I don’t believe I have ever encountered any of those terms before.
Lambic beer is a Belgian style. They use a lot less hops in it. The fruit ones are made by taking a lambic and then re-fermenting it with fruit inside. Kriek uses sour morello cherries, Framboise uses raspberries. They’re the two most common types but I’ve seen blackcurrant (cassis) and peach before too, never tried though.
I’m not big on beer. I tend to like either very clear, crisp ones (Japanese-brewed Asahi and Kirin are good for that) or the darker and richer varieties like Trappists (Chimay Blue or Rochefort 15, incidentally can’t stand Chimay Red, it’s like drinking vegemite). Also don’t mind Hoegaarden periodically but have to be in the mood.
Morning, TAY
Over the weekend I played a bunch o’ games. Finished LEGO Jurassic Park which was pretty great. Admittedly made me want to give Jurassic World another chance…
Also started playing Dragon’s Dogma. I spent a while in the character creator trying to make my character look as close as possible to me. Ended up with something that looked reasonable in the editor and went “good enough!” and started the game. As soon as the first cutscene plays the character face contorts into a smile that makes him look like a bloated sponge and his eyes look completely hollow (So yeah, pretty close! :P). What is it with editor screens and not looking like the rest of the game…
*glares at red-headed Xenoblade character*
Unrealistic Representation of Video Game Characters in Character Creation Menus
Read more
Oh yeah and finally pulled the trigger on that gtx970 last night. So that should be getting here soon, hopefully.
finally had a chill weekend. Played a bunch of Far Cry 4, had to keep taking breaks because every time I tried to go somewhere to start a mission I’d wind up getting attacked by a tiger or packs of wild dogs when I stopped to deal with a karma event or something. Still, great game, looks great, satisfying if sometimes frustratingly difficult combat encounters. For some reason despite taking out several outposts without raising an alarm or making any enemy aggro the game things I’ve only done this once. Maybe the enemies can’t see you at all? I’ll step up my game now that I have a silenced sniper rifle.
Also tried to knock out a few games on Steam. Bought GalCivIII and Anna’s Quest since both were on sale. Only played a few more games from the Apogee pack I bought awhile. Man, these games are so not that great anymore. Even the best of them are boring, with the worst of them being borderline unplayable. I wrestle with them for 15 minutes then realise I am wasting a lot of time I could be using to do something not as shit.
Hey all, seems to have missed the Kotaku news turn-around, but Red Dead Redemption can be found in the x1s back-end. So far the only way to do it is:
1. you need to look up a user that has it in their followed games list. One such user is RockoHoward. So on the x1 dash hit left on the dpad or left stick and on the friends tab go to find someone, then type “rockohoward” then go down to view profile.
2. RB over to Following and change Friends and Games to Games
3. Hit down a couple of times and hit A on RDR, then go to See in store
4. Because I own it digitally it says Install.
Unfortunately this is actually just a back end bug now, but it does give credence to hope that it will come to the BC program soon. When I downloaded it and opened it freaking Hexic HD loaded up, but supposedly many users got in before MS released an update which turned RDR into Hexic.
To make the news of RDR almost confirmed to be coming to x1 bc even sweeter, you can also see Left 4 Dead 2 in RockoHowards game list. Unfortunately that game says unavailable (even though I own it digitally as well). Still fantastic news for x1 owners!
EDIT: For convenience I’ve started “following” those 2 games as well. My GT is my kotaku username with a space instead of the underscore.
Microsoft have already killed this.
You can reportedly still play it if you have it already downloaded, go offline on your Xbone and then boot up the game.
Yup, that’s why when I open RDR it actually opens hexic now.
Still it’s awesome that we are getting L4D2 and RDR in BC. They are the only reason my x360 is still plugged in. Now I can move it to the exercise room as a streaming device.
Hello all.
My weekend consisted of being ill, taking anton out for birthday dinner, and Laneway.
Chvrches were amazing.
I’m back at work. wanting to sleep. and still ill
Anyone interested in the Superbowl? I’m kinda annoyed I forgot to take the day off like I have done the last few years… Ah well, I’ll just leg it up to the pub at lunch to see a bit of it, I’m sure I can watch a replay somewhere later.
Yep, Don’t follow the day to day of the season but I’ll watch the superbowl
Have rive chart and highlights up on my 2nd monitor while I’m working. Depending on the time I might duck down the pub for the last qtr
I also have a rather large bet riding on it
So checked with Tiglet this morning and apparently she is going for Denver today. Daddy is supporting Carolina. So gave her 10 to 1 odds. If Carolina win she has to give me 10 kisses but if Denver win Daddy will give her 100 kisses.That is the officially the cutest example of childhood gambling I’ve ever heard 😛
I’m not a season follower but we’ve got it running on the TV in the office.
So far, all I have taken away from this game is that I don’t get why people think Peyton Manning is good.
He is 40 years old and about to retire, can’t really see that it’s fair comparing him or his ability now to Cam Newton who’s 26 and arguably in his prime right now.
Yeah, was having a chat with one of the bigger fans here and they said something similar.
Although you can also watch superbowl 48 if you want to consider him really overrated
Having said that, looks like
he’s about to retire with another ring!Was getting pretty tempted to get Xcom 2, apparently awesome by all accounts.
But then I realised I have never actually completed a turn based game aside from the original pokemon back in the day.
Got maybe a dozen that I can think of, in various flavours on various platforms, all abandoned partway through. Even 4X I’ve usually only played a couple games then got bored.
I think my enjoyment in these games is creating the perfect squad/strategy/build but once I have, it becomes rote and repetitive.
Anyone else have a genre like that? That you think you like but the numbers say otherwise?
I love turn-based strategy games like CiV and XCom but I find the idea of starting a new game so overwhelming and intimidating that I hardly play them. I ought CiV and all the DLC but have played maybe two campaigns through to completion. I played XCom once, then a second time when the Enemy Within DLC came out. I’m holding off on XCom2 because a) I haven’t really gotten my money’s worth from 1, and b) my PC needs an upgrade.
I think I like Xenoblade but I’ve only played a small fraction of one game and a bit of the start of another.
That’s the thing about XCOM though…you kinda can’t get your perfect build going consistantly without stupid luck, and even then a spanner can be thrown in the works because of the way injuries work.
As an example, my main medic lost 2 HP in one mission and was out of action for a week. I had to build up a new medic from scratch cause I didn’t have a spare, and halfway through the spare’s first mission she got instakilled. Suddenly I have my explosives expert running around with a medkit so I can at least try and keep people alive…
It forces you to have an A team, a B team, and backups for each.
Man, I never really had my teams planned out like that. I’d usually go with two of my highest ranking soldiers and throw a few newbies into the mix to get them to rank up so I wouldn’t be completely screwed. My top sniper (who I had named after my wife and therefore gave all the best gear because she promised to harm me if anything happened to “her”) went on nearly every mission. She was gravely wounded once which was a nailbiting experience as I think I had no medkits left and she was going to bleed out if I didn’t finish the mission in 3 turns or something. Hard to remember, I haven’t really played the game since the enemy within DLC first dropped.
Man arrested after throwing a cat from a second story window.
http://pussingtonpost.com/owner-arrested-after-throwing-cat-from-second-story-cat-recovering/
He’s facing feliney charges.
EVERY PAGE IS PAGE SIX.
O_O
That poor kitty…
You have cat to be kitten me! That is pawfull!
What a catastrophe.
While these puns are making me chuckle, I hope the cat makes a full recovery.
Agreed!
Yeah I hope so too!
I’m just hoping the guy doesn’t try to establish an Exemption Clawse over this one.
If he does, he will have to face the TAYbies in all their furry… it would be a cataclysm! Then again, getting vengeance would be just purrfect.
Indeed, he’d be running to his lawyer going “Please, get meowt of this situation!”
Yeah, I hope he doesn’t get off via a furfy and gets thrown in jail. That would be purrrfect.
Edit: I got beaten for the use of purrrfect 🙁
Nicking puns? You’ve changed…
Are you an impurrrsonator?
You were off just by a whisker
I was scratching around trying to think of another pun and ended up coming in at the tail end of the conversation.
You truly are a runt of the litter.
@tech_knight I think we can all agree that anyone who can throw a cat out a window is a meownster.
@cffndncr
Indeed, he’ll most likely be on that criminals against pets documentary, narrated by David Cattenborough.
cc @beeawwb
“Man arrested for being human garbage”
Fixed the headline for you.
That was the original headline, but they threw it out!
Firewatch!!!
*cough* I mean, “I hope everyone had a great weekend.” I spent a little time playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, but got to a really open area where the framerate varied a little too much. Shakey cam + 15-50 fps meant I felt ill pretty quickly, so I caved to peer- (and general internet-) pressure and picked up Xcom2. My first game ended after about five hours, where I’d spent a bunch of intel and not recovered it before a “double all intel costs” dark event, so couldn’t get to the enemy base to slow the enemy progress. On the plus side, I think I only lost one soldier. 😛
Also binge-watched Hellsing Ultimate, which was as amazing as I remember.
And suddenly it’s Monday.
Firewatch? Ohhhhhh, you mean turtle holding simulator 2016
That turtle gonna be so held
*Tortoise holding simulator 2016 – the cute little guy has feet. :3
Whether they have flippers or not isn’t what makes them a tortoise vs a turtle. There are turtle species with feet – usually webbed. Tortoises spend all their time on land, turtles (and terrapins) are swimmers. The naming conventions are all over the place and inconsistent though and technically in English, ‘Turtle’ is a catch-all for all types of chelonian.
So it’s a turtle.
Scienced!
From wikipedia:
TIL. So, the naming conventions are pretty well established in America and Britain. In Australia (at least when I was in school) we leant toward the British option in all things – “color” was a spelling error – but modern interconnectedness seems to be bleeding Americanisms like a stuck pig. My upbringing compels me to stem the flow wherever I can. 😛
That said, a closer look at the setting (Wyoming), and the chelonian in question, it looks like it’s probably an Ornate Box Turtle – one of only two terrestrial species of turtle native to the US. So… my semantic grievances aside, it is indeed, taxonomically speaking, a turtle.
Language, right? Proof that the story of the Tower of Babel is bullshit – even when we speak the same language we’re confusingly inconsistent.
…and this is why we have scientific names, because common names are largely useless to determine relatedness or indeed broad classifications…
As well as the tortoise/turtle shenanigans (and if it’s on land it’s a tortoise, dammit), also see:
Magpie
Crayfish
Daddy Longlegs
for regional names for completely different things…
Yeah well to fuck with you, despite being a turtle, the Ornate Box Turtle that @os42 suggested it is has the family name Terrapene. 😛
*genus Terrapene, family Emydidae. 🙂
And yes, it’s a fun one. Biological nomenclature has some entertaining rules, which leads to some very funny quirks. Most importantly though, when we talk about T. ornata we know it’s a box turtle we’re talking about, and we also know it’ll be one of the two subspecies.
One of my favourite pages on the whole internets is this one, which shows you how utterly ridiculous biologists can be:
http://www.curioustaxonomy.net/puns/puns.html
…technically a land terrapin, but you know… 🙂
Hmm… I can’t actually find any taxonomical logic behind terrapins – aside from Malaclemys terrapin and its subspecies, terrapins are all over the family tree. I also can’t find an article referring to Terrapene ornata ornata (or, oddly enough, any of the Terrapene genus) as terrapins… further cementing the idea that common names are bunk. 😛
Exactly. Terrapin is a British English name for small freshwater turtles. It’s polyphyletic (“all over the family tree”). Most of the Emydids are aquatic (or at least amphibious), but the box turtles of Terrapene seem to have moved fully to land. So yes, they’re land terrapins, but only a Brit would understand that! 😀
SCIENCE IS FUN. 😉
Other fun useless groups would be:
– the now defunct “pachyderms” which when I was a kid commonly included elephants, rhinos and hippos, which are not a clade at all.
– “reptiles” which used to mean lizards, snakes, dinosaurs, turtles, crocodiles. Yes, those are a clade, but in order to be accurate it would have to include birds… crocs are more closely related to birds than to lizards. It’s still loosely used, but it’s not particularly useful.
You sir, @trikeabout have debunked what I thought was still the truth.
How long have elephants/rhinos not been pachyderms?!?
I feel like my primary school truths are unraveling…
I asked on the twitter but with no current responses, i will ask on here.
Do you think $70 for a squid hat is unreasonable?
I don’t know what a squid hat is. Is this a Splatoon thing?
It’s the hair for the female inklings, designed for cosplay.
While I’m sure certain people would buy it, I think $50 would generally be the maximum that people would pay for a hat, squid or otherwise.
They’re selling the for $80 on etsy and they are using fleece, a much cheaper material. I’m using lycra/spandex which ranges between $20-$30 a metre. It’s a material they use for swimsuits and exercise gear so it’s cool and UV resistant
Never mind me then. I’m not fully aware of the pricing scale for this sort of stuff and I was mostly going off how much the mum of a friend of mine was selling her woolen dwarf hat and beard. Now that I remember though, she was basically not making much extra money on the hats.
Well here’s an example
https://www.etsy.com/listing/238797198/splatoon-hat-girl-version
They are not as long, using a much cheaper fleece material. $5US a metre.
Maybe I should post pictures of my one. The prototype
Sounds like they’re trying to… fleece… people with that kind of price. I’d lycra to buy yours instead.
‘Hat’ kind of undersells exactly what @scree is talking about here. It’s more like a plushie that sits on your head.
It’s still a hat that sits on your head. But yes, it is very plush.
Agh shoot I forgot about the head measurements, sorry I’ll try to do that tonight
It’s all good. I’ve found most people are a medium. Just keep working on the backpack
The back plate that goes over my shoulders is done, just got the larger rounder part left to do, I’m not struggling yet, but I know I will at some point with the smaller pieces especially, I think I’ll prioritise the tiny pieces first this time.
Sorry I’ve been busy. I’ve been trying to get bits and pieces done but it’s been hard with the hot weather and such. I’m going to keep going though and hope it is done this month. It’s definitely looking better already I think.
One more thing. We should meet up with Cameron and Talia the week before supanova and go over merchandise.
Yep sure thing.
Like the ones you made for PAX? $70 minimum I’d say. They were really well-made. You could probably ask for more.
Yes. Almost exactly the same. I’m tweaking the pattern to fix up the things I’m not happy with though.
So here’s the deal. Sydney TAYbies. It’s been a while since we’ve had a proper piss up. Time to relive the glory days. I said on Twitter the 5th of March BUT I double booked myself already. So how about we say the 19th of March? That’s pretty much my next free Saturday. It’ll be not only a great night but a late #Danniversary. TELL EVERYONE!
Dunno everyone’s user names so feel free to tag them in here please for a second
Keen to make it there, but not sure if I can. Partially costs, partially probably having a birthday thing that weekend.
Look at mr popular over here.
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF
Id love to defend myself but I’m a bit busy. I’ll have my guys call your guys and they can sort this out.
Where shall this wonderful event be held?
Eugh the day after I fly to Hong Kong.
Does the Sydney TAY event schedule revolve around when I am not available?
Also, you can get all the relevant tags from http://www.taytags.com/
What ya in Hong Kong for?
Friend’s wedding.
Well, mostly for the bucks party in Macau, but there will also be a wedding. It’s also my birthday, so it’s kind of a combined trip.
Birthday isnt March 20th is it? Ill be Hong Kong early April for the Rugby.
27th, actually. We’re there a week before the rugby thankfully… everything is about 3x cheaper around the tournament dates.
Edit: 3x cheaper outside the tournament dates.
yeah, me old man is paying $1500 for hotel for 4 nights. Im airBnB for like $380 total.
and you aren’t mooching off your old man… why? 😀
@cffndncr cause I don’t get to mooch of parents anymore.
Yes.
Finally.
ping @35 @alexpants @anonymous_pessimist @batgirl @batguy @cakesmith @cffndncr @cj @cookingmama @dkzeitgeist @doc_what @effluvium-boy @fatshadylive @gingerchris86 @gorzilla @harli @hugo_the_hungarian_barbarian @mawt @morkai @markserrels @mrtaco @novacascade @powalen @pupp3tmast3r @ruffleberg @shiggyninty
Darn elitist Sydney people!
😛
Pong!
Hovering over ‘purchase’ button for flights. $158 return… HMMMMM
Dooooooo eeeeeeet. #enabler
If he does it, will you? 😛
I’ll consider it?
I should probably save for bond money.
JAMES BOND MONEY.
I NEED TO GET A NEW TAILORED SUIT IS WHAT I MEAN.
I know I have that weekend off. So while we’re adding reasons make it a Sharples and I birthday celebration aswell.
So I finished Fallout 4 the other day. Still think it’s a great game for all the wrong reasons.
I heard a lot of complaints about the story, how it’s too rushed and expects you to care for a family you barely spend any time with. I ignored the story until after about 120 hours, at which point the game shifts into act 2 and everything picks up.They did a good job with Kellogg, making him appear more than one dimensional. Then they throw a plot twist at you I wasn’t expecting. Originally I thought they were trying to surprise you with the reveal that your kid has been growing up for 10 years. But they didn’t hide that at all, instead they reveal that your son grew up to become the leader of the institute. This reveal added an extra layer to this faction to make you really consider which side to root for. I thought this was really done well.
The choices and sides you take aren’t one dimensional. There’s no real bad or good guy side. The Minutemen are the only faction that are genuine, they just want to help people. Ultimately you just have to tell one faction to go fuck themselves. Even New Vegas had more clearer villains.
I found the art style to be amazing, much better than previous games. Everything looks so dirty and rusted.
The gameplay is a lot better. Except for throwing grenades. Why the hell did they have to go with this system? It’s so cumbersome and delayed. I also didn’t like how swapping weapons also reloaded them. Kinda defeats the purpose.
I’m still annoyed there’s no hardcore mode and that the hardest setting wasn’t really that challenging.
One thing that really bothered me is that violence is the solution to almost everything. Every time you enter an area you can be expected to shoot your way out. I walked into a race track and everybody just started going nuts. I walked into a fighting arena and everybody started charging me. Did they really not have enough time to program in the ability for me to talk or buy Cait? Or bet on fights? Or enter the fights?
The Settlement system was fun, however it was one of the more easiest ways to earn experience. I leveled up several times from just building floors. I then also realised that there’s no real point to think about how you’re building anything. So long as the numbers stay outside the red, you’re good. Build 20 beds, throw down 3-5 turrets, about 10 plants and you’ll never have to worry about that settlement again.
Probably the biggest disappointment for the game comes in the survival aspect. It really didn’t feel like I was surviving a harsh environment. I wasn’t scrounging up random items to live, I just wanted materials to help build floors. Or upgrade my weapons or power armour. Once I reached the max for all upgrade materials, I had no reason to collect anything anymore. It’s just a collectathon, designed with WoW/Borderlands numbers system. You’re not really upgrading weapons to be helpful, you just need the numbers to go up. Need bigger numbers, and the only reason why you want to keep upgrading is because you can see the next level that’s blacked out. Gotta get it highlighted so you can build it.
This is made worst with Power Armour. It seems like the game was designed with a constant use of Power Armour. This limits the variety of designs you can have (Raider armour is the only one that really stands out). Originally Power Armour was something special, and end goal. You’re given it before you even finish the tutorial. Every PA after that just adds to the collection. You grab it and make the journey back to your collection base. Set them all up in display, matching colours and all. You don’t need it, you’re not going to destroy it for parts, you just want to clean up the collecables. If this was Ubisoft, all PAs would be icons on the map.
Which is a shame because I really loved the individual pieces of armour you put on your person, hidden behind PA.
On top of the Netrunner tournament I came second in on Saturday, I’m in a local league. We get matched up and then play either online or in person before the deadline. I was really hoping to get my league opponent during the tournament. I did not. I had to go into town today to sneak in a match against him.
That match made me realise two things. 1) I can beat people better than me if I’m really focusing. 2) The Runner deck I’m using is crazy good but I often just decide on completely the wrong way to approach the game with it.
If I want to win more games soon, I should take apart the runner deck and try something else. If I want to get better, I should keep using this deck so that I learn to stop fucking up.
In other news, I will be taking apart my Corp deck. Despite the awesome name (Kitten SYNC), it’s just not that powerful and requires quite a lot of bluffing to win against skilled opponents.
That weekend was fun and exhausting. I started off with the 10km Sun Run and then Batboy had a lovely birthday party in the park with friends, cousins, scooters and cake
Also, I got the 25000 steps badge on fitbit for the first time 🙂
Wow, those bricks look great. Thought they were real for a moment.
I made them using a silicone mould and candy melt (which is similar to white chocolate, but sets a bit harder and shinier). Batboy was very impressed.
I don’t believe you, they are definitely real.
That cake looks like a shot straight out of a cookbook or something.
Also looks like it’s got enough food coloring to get kids bouncing off the walls for a month 😛
Thank you! It’s the wrong time of year to be making frosting, I had to put it in the freezer to set. And the colours are bright because I used the food dye pastes, which are more concentrated and better quality than the liquid ones.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160208124241.htm?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Scientists at the University of Melbourne are preparing to turn paraplegics into cyborgs in power armor.
(P.S. Holy shit when did it become The Future?)
Next step, ROBOCOP!
Only if Kurtwood Smith can be the bad guy.
@highperformance – RE Ark Survival evolved performance.
still a very early unoptimised UE4 title, but….
running mine at 1080p on high settings at about 90fps…
(i5 4690k 16gb Ram and a 4gb GTX970 G1 gaming card)
was running at about 45-50fps before i started optimizing.
3 tips that each greatly increase performance?
1. Dropped resolution scale to about half way. at the half way mark, the game renders the resolution at 1080p and displays it in 1080p. if its maxed out, the game is rendering at 3840 x 2160 (200% resolution scale) and displays in 1080p which is unnecessary.
2. Nvidia Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Global Settings -> Power Management Mode. Change from Adaptive to “Prefer Maximum Performance”
3. I havent personally tried this one but apparently lowering the lighting beams can double your fps with extremely minimal visual diferences. edit the lightmas file and change DefaultStaticMeshLightingRes=64 to 32
Those first 2 tips alone though bumped me from 45ish FPS to 90 though
Did anyone want to pre-order some bookmarks? No money required, I just want to know before I print them off in March so I can get extra printed.
Sure if I can put down a pre-order for the Spyro and Crash Bandicoot ones 🙂
Yup. It’ll let me know how many to get. I don’t expect you to pay though, as you’re helping me at Supanova. Also, it’s not open Friday in Melbourne. It’s only open at night and that doesn’t include the stalls
Do you have a gallery of sorts of what you’ve got designed at the moment?
I have imgur links! I have to post them separately though.
Can’t do it on my mobile which sucks
Good morning! Didn’t get that day off on Friday to sink into XCOM, but I did get it yesterday. Met up with a friend who moved interstate and I haven’t seen for a year, went to our favourite bar, watched the superbowl and downed some craft beers; definitely better than working on a Monday.
How’s everyone’s XCOM games going? I played 5 hours or so, and then decided to start again. Played another 8 hours or so now – got worried at one point that I was going to lose vs the Avatar counter but then…
(Are we spoilering XCOM stuff? It’s not story related, but mechanics. Also, the button isn’t generating the tags, so here’s hoping the tag is AngleBracket – s – AngleBracket)
I knocked off one of the Avatar facilities and the counter went down by three. I’ve got the blacksite vial coordinates mission and the codex brain coordinates mission lined up, and another facility, all just one step outside my current territory. Feeling better now, except that both berserkers and archons have appeared.Everything is going really well in my game so far EXCEPT for the Avatar counter. Every time an opportunity to knock the counter back comes up, it’s a huge slog to get to the location I need to be at…
You should post those profiles on here. People will appreciate it.
I’ve been uploading them to steam so I can do that right now 😛
Yeah this was exactly why I had to restart, that and most of my team being injured. I didn’t realize how important radio comms were so built them late and this resulted in the bases being active for far too long.I’ve got a couple of majors, a couple of LTs, and then almost everyone else are sergeants. I’ve gotten caught a couple of times expecting that I’ve brought along a medic-spec’d specialist, only to find I’ve got two hackers; or a gunslinger to find I’ve got two snipers.
Yeah that’s happened to me a few times, I guess what I find really annoying is the medics are a lot less useful than before? I remember in the old XCOM if you healed an ally mid-mission they were only treated as partly injured for recovery; in the new game healing them from low HP still brings them back as gravely wounded and they’re out of commission for 2-3 weeks.On an enjoyment scale I find I was enjoying the original game more? The timers pull the game away from how I enjoyed playing; the Avatar Project creates a layer of frustration because so many of the ways to slow its progress are usually hard to reach unless you start preparing for them well and truly in advance (i.e. you’re expected to restart a few times) and the research/build queues feel like there’s a definite “right way or order” to how the developers wanted you to do things? Whereas in the last game you had more freedom to mess up and recover?
Also screw the randomly generated crap; I once had a guerilla op with 5 alien units clumped in a corner of a room overlooking the objective. Luckily my grenadier had the conceal ability (thank you AWC) so when I scouted ahead I juts dropped a few plasma grenades on them. But seriously? 5 aliens in a corner waiting for me to reveal the objective?? CMON =@ (2 mutons, 2 troopers and 1 Archon). So yeah screw you game.
Yeah maybe worth spoilering the story mission related stuff as they’re probably milestones people might want to figure out on their own?
My first attempt I made the mistake of rushing the skulljack mission. And by rushing I mean I activated it at the same time as the first blacksite mission. This resulted in my under-experienced team having to contend with codex’s in every single damn mission from the get go. It’s kind of annoying that the enemies triggered aren’t tied to research tiers like the old game but are triggered by mission sequences. With regards to the Avatar counter my experience so far has been that it slows down a lot after the first few months as long as you keep countering dark events and hit the bases ASAP as each new base adds an extra bar of progress. To help hit them fast you should prioritize one radio room and be prepared to upgrade and dedicate 2 engineers to it. This usually unlocks around 10 regions for you to make contact with. The bright side is the more regions you have the more income next month so it definitely ends up paying for itself; I can also safely say the early game in XCOM 2 is so bloody critical to the rest of the game that if you screw up the build or resource order you’re probably not going to recover. Mainly because you get hit with the blacksite mission; the facilities missions; the codex mission as well as the UFO invasion mission all pretty early on and usually back to back giving you very little time for injured team members to recover which has a bad habit of spiralling. However once you clear that initial difficulty spike the game becomes a lot lot cruisier.Helpful tip – grenades are super useful once you upgrade the launcher and get plasmas.
I did the vial mission on Sunday. This being my entry to the series, I save-scummed the hell out of it. :3 Got to the objective with my core team all on 1-2 health, while my sniper hung back out of harms way. Core team was ambushed at the vial, and two died instantly. Reload. Got the vial, blew open a wall (and the two Advent on the other side) and fled for the evac. My sniper then had to get across the map to get to the evac. Had my three wounded waiting as long as I dared, and got them out as the sniper was one turn away from the chopper. Sniper then got mind-controlled, at which point she was immediately abandoned by the evac team. Bastards. Reloaded and left my heavy (who had 2 health left) by the evac point to cover my sniper’s approach, and somehow got them both out safely.Currently working on expanding my squad so I’m not relying on the same six-or-so that I started with, which has already come back to bite me once or twice.
I had a similar thing happen when I did the blacksite, but they were rookies I had to leave behind so it didn’t phase me. A stun lancer knocked one unconscious and another got mind controlled, so the rest of my (better trained) squad just left them there. They get marked as “captured” in the debrief, interestingly – it does make me wonder if they’ll crop up again, maybe in a VIP rescue?
@chuloopa @tech_knight after we talked about 40k the other day, my FB is basically wall-to-wall ads for new models, second-hand models, codexes, etc…
… urge to give those GW jerks my money… rising…
I actually stepped into my local store recently and asked “what am I looking at if I want to get back into painting?”
Within about 5 minutes of him explaining the current prices of paint sets and brushes, and clippers for sprues, base spray paints etc… All on top of the cost of the models themselves, I think I’ll stick with catching up on Horus Heresey novels.
See below.
For affordable paints the stuff from Vallejo is really good (aside from some rather thin reds and yellows) and you can buy it from overseas for more savings.
Secret weapon brushes are cheap and good for people just starting out again. Plus most of GW’s brushes are synthetic which at the price they are asking isn’t worth it. Kolinsky Sable is the best tips for brushes around.
Never EVER even ENTERTAIN the idea of getting clippers and stuff from GW. Flat clippers for your sprues can be found on ebay for $2. Scalpels can be found in the craft section of kmart for the same price.
For base spray i have been experimenting with Rustoleum matt-black primer. It worked well on my deadzone stuff, but you need to use it carefully as it can clog details a little bit if you sweep too slowly.
Even if you aren’t thinking about it now, this will help you if you ever consider it in the future. NEVER buy into GW prices. The only thing you should ever pay GW prices is some of their paints.
I imagined that simpsons gif where Abe sees Bart and leaves
It wasn’t far off that.
NEVER give GW money directly.
EVER.
blackcultist.com.au has some of the cheapest pricing in Australia and are a pleasure to deal with. Always responsive to questions and they usually ship within the a week (as they usually don’t keep stock on hand and rather order it in for you). I ordered my battle mat from them, and the service and shipping times were awesome.
bunkergames.net is THE cheapest place on the net. Just about every weekend they have 30% off all GW stock. At the moment they have up to 60% off some stuff. Most of the good stuff is in the 35-45% off sections, though. These guys also usually place an order after you order, but they are less responsive. It can take a couple of weeks for them to actually send something and can be unresponsive at times. I’ve placed 2 orders with them – the first i had to cancel as they couldn’t get it to me in time, the second i had no issues and had the order in the space of 2 weeks.
Ebay and gumtree – when all else fails, these rarely do. I once got a full chaos space marines army with a carry case for $100.
Winning.
Dammit Loops! What have you done?! Like I needed more encouragement to spend hideous amounts of money!
;D
Please – I may be a facilitator, but I’m a low cost facilitator.
I’m the worlds friendliest and customer-friendly pimp.
As a business I don’t have much love for GW. But their products are amazing.
DAMN THEM!
*sigh*
I thought I was catching up on the HH novels, turns out I’m still 14 behind the current books… I don’t know if I’ll ever catch up at this rate… I was buying 3-4 of them at a time from Book Depository, and it would take me anywhere from 2-6 weeks to read one, so trying to catch up on 14 of them, at an average of a month a piece, means there will be another few released by the time I finish the ones I’m behind on!
*double sigh*
I’m still only on the 1st one… -_-
I haven’t even bothered. As interesting as they would be, there is no way I would ever be able to get through them, so I just stick to the 40k novels that are more manageable.
Gaunt’s Ghosts is easily one of my favorite series of all time
I was really really keen on Gaunts Ghosts and the Space Wolf/Ragnar Blackmane series in high school, but I’m probably way behind on those too.
Last GG one I remember reading was Necropolis which I’ve read 4-5 times over the years.
I’ve got the first 2 omnibuses… I haven’t read anything after that yet, though.
It would be nice if people i like could stop dying.
It’ll be interesting to see how they respond when 3D printing gets to the point it can print off mold-quality figures. I mean, even if you have to spend $1,000 on a printer, that’s the cost of what, a 1,000 point army?
That’s assuming you buy your own printer. It’d be even cheaper to rent one and just pump out an army
Assuming they do respond and don’t just sit in the corner with their fingers in their ears while pumping out more shitty mobile games.
To be honest, that’s probably the best-case scenario. Everyone gets access to cheap printed models without having to deal with GW pulling some copyright shenanigans.
I mean, this could be a whole new model for them. Sell schematics for 3D printed models, rulebooks, that sort of stuff, and get out of the production and distribution game altogether. It won’t happen overnight, since most won’t have access to a printer, but GW could transition to being a service provider rather than a manufacturer.
That’s the dream anyway. I think in reality we’re going to see them try to clamp down to maintain their profit margins, and it’s going to be a total shitfight and further ruin their brand credibility (if there’s any of that left).
Problem is that home 3d printing is still a LONG way off that quality.
I think it’s far more a pipe dream at the moment than anything else.
I’ll keep tabs on that for a later date, my money is going towards my new PC for the moment. Thanks Loops!
I’m hanging out for the new AMD/Nvidia cards to be released this year before I bother with a new PC, my current GTX670 keeps surprising me with what it can run.
My GTX 580 has served me well up to a few months ago where the drivers started crashing and automatically recovering on some games, and the worse one where the card itself seems to crash (Hearing a fan also die down to zero too) and doesn’t come back up, that gets caused by XCOM: Enemy Within and Hammerwatch (Yes that pixelart isometric dungeon crawler… I HAVE NO IDEA how that game causes such problems with my graphics card yet I can still play Starcraft 2 and League of Legends without issue and they’re prettier games!)
I really need a new laptop, but i have to rely on winning one at this point haha
Dangit, looks like this extra/increased work thing is probably actually happening. They just gotta figure out how they’re going to pay me.
With money, hopefully!
https://youtu.be/OaiSHcHM0PA?t=54
I tried a cronut today.
I like cronuts.
Cryonuts?
That’s cold, man.
They’re better than Chronots… they take too long to eat.
I’ve been slowly creating TAYbies in XCOM when I need new people (as is the norm these days 😛 ) and have been posting them on Twitter. As @scree pointed out, I should chuck them on here so non-Twitter people can see them.
@scree:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=619183814
@beeawwb:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618139171
@pixel_the_ferret_viking:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=617280289
@blaghman:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616451702
@alexpants:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616451561
@freezespreston:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616451372
@greenius:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=617131768
@rocketman:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616451042
I’ll be putting more up as I make them/people get injured or killed 😛
I said it when @thecracks created me, and I’ll say it again. It’s scary how close that representation looks to me.
And A++ work on the bio. It’s also true.
There’s not many face options (5 each for male and female, I think?) so visual customisation, much like Malibu Stacy, is all about accessories.
I’m just glad they have an option of sideburns and another option for mutton chops. Most games skip one or both 😛
Yeah, I usually lament the available options for sideburn customisation. Never get it quite the way I want.
If you don’t make me by the time I get the game going I’ll make myself 😛
Edit 2: HAHAHAHA I just noticed the flag on Scree’s, perfect!
I refuse to make you a character until I have access to exosuit armour. Actually, if it let me rename B-ob’s Gremlin robot you’d already be in the game…
I’m letting the game choose nicknames and going with them to make things more interesting. Also, Scree’s nickname isn’t Sorry…because it’s the name of her gun 😛
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=619184244
Okay that’s 100% awesome then 🙂
I’m slightly disappointed that Pixel’s bio isn’t just Swedish chef gibberish for the whole thing.
That was the first draft, but I was hoping this would get a bigger laugh 😛
I’m kiiiiinda tempted to cosplay something like this at pax or something 😛
Furst you teke de cosplay and poot it on ur boody… Bork bork bork.
Make me next!
I like that Scree is Canadian.
Hah, I fear what I’d look like in one of these things… Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think I ever played Enemy Unknown despite buying it in one of the multitude of steam sales over the years… I should probably play that to figure out if I like the whole turn based combat thing before shelling out for Xcom 2 right?
I would say yes. XCOM is far more forgiving than XCOM 2 so it’s a better starting point.
I am rather enjoying these. Mostly how Rocketman wasn’t born but rather found in a cemetery
I’ll keep this all in 1 thread, but here are a couple that I’ve done. These are only the ones I’ve been able to grab off Twitter, the others haven’t been uploaded yet. They’re also no where near as good as what Rize has done.
@blaghman – http://imgur.com/a/jPiKn
@rocketman – http://i.imgur.com/nSEwvOz.jpg
@sernobulus – http://i.imgur.com/q19XoZB.jpg
Have I mentioned you’re a dick? I’m sure I have but I’m going to remind you again.
Says the person with the phallic username
@rize – http://i.imgur.com/BXNdZ3G.jpg
@pixel_the_ferret_viking – http://imgur.com/a/dZ6aM
I really need to change your country of origin…
Or do you?
Holy hell @freezespreston’s profile, I can’t stop laughing!…
Also starting to become slightly more serious about EVERYONE should cosplay as their Xcom persona… Could be a glorious TAY meat up at a convention!
Plus, @rocketman’s hair would be awesome in real life.
So much work D=
SEND ME IN COACH
I’ve made a you but have yet to deploy so he’s not screenshotted yet 😛
YAY!
My XCOM post just went in to moderation…
EDIT: I forgot to include @cakesmith:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616369746
So after the discussion earlier about Crysis, I thought I’d reinstall it. Then I thought “I know I’ll activate my Crysis key on Origin”.
WHAT AN IDIOT, THAT’LL NEVER WORK.
You’re right, it didn’t.
So I contacted EA support’s live chat thing, and said “hey, I’ve got Crysis and Crysis: Warhead here that I bought way back when, the CD keys don’t activate with Origin. Is there a way to make this work, or do I need to go back and install from the discs?”
“Hi Trikeabout, I’ve added Crysis to your Origin account. I’m sorry but I can’t add Warhead and you’ll still need to reinstall that from the disc. If you’re playing on Windows 8 or newer you’ll need to download the 1.1 patch from the EA site to get rid of the old copy protection otherwise it won’t work. I’m sorry about that but hopefully I’ve made your day half as difficult. Enjoy replaying the games!”
*trikeabout falls off chair* Thank you Prateek of EA support… 😀
@crazyguy1990 Crysis “book club”? 😉
The first half of Crysis is some of the best FPS gaming I’ve enjoyed. The second half elicited all sorts of negative feelings from me ranging from boredom to frustration to nausea.
Powalen’s Adventures with Clients at Work! *jingle*
School: “Can you do some retouching on these photos before you upload them to our website?”
Sure, what do you need done?
School: “How much would it cost for you to digitally iron all of the students’ shirts?”
…probably much more than it would’ve been to just iron the shirts before the photo was taken…
Too hot.
Very tired.
Send help.
If you only had time for one, would you get Firewatch or The Wetness
Well that was a weird autocorrect typo
Of the two, Witness probably has me the most intrigued.
Also it’s on Humble, so it’s the only one I’d actually buy anyway 😛
The Wetness sounds like my kind of game.
Giggidy.
If there’s a new Leisure Suit Larry game, that should be the title.
The Witness is 20-40 hours for a playthrough.
Firewatch is 4.
If you’ve got time for the witness, you’ve got time for both. If you don’t have time for both, then you’ve only got time for firewatch.
How’s that for arbitrary logic?
I don’t have time for either.
I should probably point out I never finished Braid.
Then I’d go for option 3 – neither.
It’s very different to Braid.
FWIW, I really, really like The Witness. It’s been a really good brainteaser.
Do you get a message like this if you fail a puzzle? – https://boldomatic.com/view/post/xnhzZA
I had no idea GameTrailers was on the brink
https://mobile.twitter.com/gametrailersvo/status/696857143593422849
@rize @spadge
Have either of you unlocked psi operatives? I haven’t been able to prioritize that research or the building until now where most of my squad is LT or above =[ Are they worth training?Relevant to my interests – clearing out space to make more power and then clear space to build psi-ops. Probably should have done sooner, and/or bought more engineers…
I’m not entirely certain purchasing engineers or scientists is worth the cost? So far they always cost so much that I know I’m going to regret buying them because it’ll force me to put off something I’ll need supplies for in the near future =[They are sooooo strong. Pants was my only psi unit and he died last night, and I instantly lost about 30% of my battle efficacy. I cannot overstate how useful stasis is, mind control is useful, and the guaranteed damage of the psi blasty thing can make all the difference..Nice; ok it sounds like it’s worth doing my 6 new recruits as psi-ops then. Yes I keep a total of 20-24 soldiers on hand at all times. For those further along exo and spider suits, yay or nay? I build one exo suit and it is useful but a single rocket launcher per mission doesn’t seem to justify the cost? Also anyone have a preferred way of dealing with codex’s? They’re such a bitch to kill :@@spadge @thecracks
Spoilered for Codex abilities.
One shot from a ranger or grenadier usually prompts them to clone, the two resultant codexes will have 5-6 health tops, and they’re taken care of by my snipers usually.I am also curious about EXO suits – building one unlocks the “Experimental Heavy Weapons” project, which I did once and got a flamethrower, which is much cooler than a rocket launcher.
I have a gauss sniper with Dragon ammo and…the…ability that gives bonus damage. That usually either kills them outright or makes them so badly injured that if they clone my other soldiers can mop them up.
EXO suits can be pretty rad. The rockets have come in super handy for blasting a line of sight through buildings, allowing for sneak long-range hacks in far fewer turns. They are also amazing for damage potential, doing more than a grenade, with a larger radius, at a greater range.
Just finished the research, got a space ready for the facility – just need to finish one more excavation so I can task the engineer onto my power relay. I had a really useful mind control from a hack last night – a muton next to an archon, which distracted the archon for one round, which is all I needed.
Man how much do archons suck! So much health, they do 8 damage per hit and dodge half your shots!It’s okay when they’re doing 8 damage to a muton! Well, actually, it critted for 11, I think.I’ve finished research and am in the process of building so I’ll get to have fun with them soon. If they’re anything like EU/EW they’re amazing to have, either as damage dealers or their amazing debuffs.
Fallout 4 train running out of puff
I can just keep *buying* more power armour now. What’s the point of the careful search and the custom built hangar holding my painstakingly sought out collection?Also haven’t found where to get the house in diamond city. Just about ready to burn through the rest of the story and be done with it for now until the ‘complete’ edition comes out in a few years.With the house:
If I remember correctly, you buy it from the secretary in the mayors office, but I think you needed to have done a couple of story things (that you’re probably up to) first for her to offer it?I’m still enjoying it but I’m only 25 – 30 hours in on this play through
Think we will continue to push the main quest along as we go, rather than deliberately avoid it. We are making our way down to diamond city.
Latest place
We just did the Polymer labs puzzle. Was a nice change of pace, and I got a piece of power armour out of it.Those quest items are now permanently stuck in my inventory.
@tigerion Aaaaand, yep, just looked it up, it’s a bug. Going to have to use a console command to wipe those items from the inventory if I ever want to get rid of them.
Heh, I remember launch skyrim having issues like this too.
Apparently my mother’s ability to insult me is actually an aura she emits.
She was at her quilting group, the question of what she does when Dad’s overseas came up, and she said that it was like being alone since her “son only goes upstairs to eat dinner and watch Doctor Who.”
And one of her quilting friends turns to her, and says “so I guess you’re not expecting grandchildren.”
Q_Q
I like that you know this.
Your Mum comes home and you ask how was quilting and she tells you all the ways you were insulted there
We were sitting around the table, eating dinner when she brought it up, and at the end she was like “I wasn’t the one who said it!”
Gee, thanks Mum, makes me feel sooooooo much better.
Sounds like what I suspect my mum secretly thinks about me too 🙁
Oh yeah, Pizza Thief’s last day at work today. No more sneaking around 😛
*Popcorn*
That is a hell of a way to make an exit
Finally, after all these years undercover! You can turn in this pizza thief!
I wonder if pancake Quesadillas will work?
Basically a crepe!
That’s a bit harsh.
It’s a crepe…
it’s some weird dough
Definitely pancake burritos!
Well I have some chicken thighs out so maybe do them up with a bit of lime and capsicum then wrap them up in the pancakes
I need an easy dinner for a very tired 5 year old, so I think a ham, cheese and corn crepe will do nicely tonight.
I was happy to get all mine sorted when I was alone with Tiglet.
There’s a few African cuisines that are use curry + crepe/pancake thing; Ethiopian, I think, is one.
For 18 months or so, we picked a new country every weekend and tried to cook a dinner from that cuisine. I mentioned it to a (very cynical) guy at work, and he suggested Ethiopian; after a little research we went for it and it was delicious. Guy at work had to deal with delicious smelling curry on Monday.
I so hope one of you XCOM 2 guys make a heavily pun-filled bio for Haggis 😛
Here’s one you could use:
Fearful, fledgling fiction writer. Gave up work in an orange juice firm – Couldn’t concentrate. New book title is Anti Gravity which is impossible to put down.
In a past life he was a priest, but he was x-communicated
He was found with a dead Sectoid with only one remaining leg attached, he introduced the creature to authorities as “Eileen”.
Avid baseball fan, he wondered why the baseball was getting bigger then it hit him. His enemy was unknown.
Constantly battling his inner demons, he realized the true enemy was within.
He kidnapped an adolescent alien, outfitted it with shell-like armor, and taught it martial arts, creating a teenage muton ninja turtle
A human. Being.
I am an actor, a writer and a rapper and I co-created my breakfast and my son, Malachai.
I only rap caucasionally.
I have an idea but I’m not sharing it here… 😀
God I keep forgetting how fucking toxic the comments are where you can draw even the most tenuous link between gaming and women.
How come TAY is so cool and everyone else has zero chill?
Jealousy, probably. Bloody meatbags
We use our unholy powers to purge the aspects of humanity that haunt the internet.
You will only find saints of the underworld here. Also take off your damn shoes before you step in here.
Shoes? Hell, I’m not wearing anything above the thighs and below the waist.
I think a lot of it is to do with the fact that a lot of us have been around for a few years, and many of us have spent time face to face as well. Stripping of the anonymity of the Internet makes a big difference in getting people to act a bit more human.
TAY is also just an inclusive place. You can jump on and be nice to people, and they’ll immediately return the favour. Plus we all have a shared love of video games so it’s easy to start a conversation. For example:
Dark Souls is shit.
*runs*
@dirksearles
I mean @markserrels …….
FTFY
They come here and there are people (including women OMG) talking about kids and sport and craft and food and other stuff and they bugger off like the annoying kids they mostly are.
Not actual conversations! The horror!
I think it helps that we’re all comfortable with the idea that our own opinions aren’t invalidated by someone else’s, and it definitely helps that a bunch of us have spoken and gotten (tho in my case just over PSN party chat), which removes a lot of the anonymity, in both directions – not only do I know that my words aren’t anonymous, but I also know that they’re read and responded to by real people with real feelings. There’s a lot of empathy in these threads that you just don’t see enough of online.
You use PSN chat? I should try that some time… 😉
Things I would like – the ability to play Until Dawn and similar games in a party mode. Although we might be able to achieve the same effect by sharing screen? Hmm.
Anyway, yes, what you said. Will have to catch you IRL when I’m in Sydney and buy you dinner for all the times you found me in a drunken Destiny session and were very tolerant… 🙂
I’m usually too busy chuckling to myself to worry about having to “tolerate” your drunken antics. 😛 But a pass-the-controller party chat for something like Until Dawn would be awesome – don’t see why screen-sharing wouldn’t work… tho I suspect QTEs could get a little tricky if the latency were noticeable… never used it, so not sure.
We’d need to trust the host to be OK at QTEs I think, but for much of the game where there’s some time to discuss choices…
…have you played it? I have it.
I’ve got it, and played it through once – lost two characters close to the end… :'( Not averse to another playthrough, tho – especially if you’ve not played it before.
Played about the first 20 mins or so with the wife, she was amused. But I think it’ll be fun to try our shared game concept, because I think if it works, it would be good for Firewatch and other similar games.
Sounds cool, count me in. Should we organise a time, or wing it? Each chapter’s about 45mins to an hour, overall about 8-9 hours.
How’s tomorrow night look? I’m in Sydney for work on Friday night (with a 6am start on Saturday morning so no shenanigans on Friday night…) and at a 50th on Saturday night… Might be cool just to see how well it works.
What are you playing at the mo? I’ve barely been on the PS4 the last couple of weeks as I’m very into E:D now I’ve found a cool and mad bunch of Aussies, and Rise of the Tomb Raider not on the PS4 boooooo.
Tomorrow night’s good.
I’ve been playing a few random games… On PS4: The Witness, Diablo 3, Warframe, and hopping onto Destiny for raids/nightfalls when my group gets together. Got convinced to download Helldivers, so will probably try that out tonight.
On PC: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Firewatch (got about 30 mins in this morning), Rocksmith… Have downloaded Dragon’s Dogma (in the hopes I might actually finish it this time :P) but leaving that at least until I’ve finished with Tomb Raider.
I don’t know, all I know is that I’ve been on the internet on a ton of different groups and communities for over two decades, and TAY is the only one I’ve found that is as good. Everywhere else has toxic people.
That’s a lovely thing to say.
It’s true, though. Everywhere else I’ve been online, there’s always that toxic minority
I’ve been a Kotaku regular and TAYbie since the Wildgoose days. TAY has never changed in terms of awesomeness in all that time. Perhaps it’s cos the people who post on regular stories notice that we’re a fairly right knit community, and it scares them off a little from joining in. Occasionally we get someone introducing themselves saying such things, and they’re always welcome to come join, providing they behave themselves 😉
I was a little intimidated, but I was commenting a lot on articles. I ended up trying it out and was accepted quite quickly.
We’ve had a few peeps pop in saying they felt a little intimidated before, but usually they’re glad they made the effort 🙂
It’s not hard to intimidate me though. I was squeezing into the smallest disabled space at Maccas and I had two women glaring at me. One was trying to move her trolley with the feminine product disposal bins down the side of our car, where the wheelchair ramp is. The woman next to us was pissed off because apparently I hadn’t given her enough space to get out of her car, but I was in between the lines. (the lines were the same width as our car, it was ridiculous.)
Yep. Gradually commented more and more, then met a few online, then posted in TAY more, then met a few more at PAX and here we are.
Did we frighten you at pax meat? And was it you who got their bookmarks soggy?
@scree no more than meeting a bunch of new people ever does. 🙂 it’ll be easier next time as I’ll recognise a few faces!
and yes. i got rained on and they became structurally unsound, but i will happily purchase a set of your next run. 🙂
I still feel bad that I kept forgetting who Cakesmith was, even with his amazing hair.
I’m taking orders for the next lot, but I need to post it, hell I should do that now
Chuloopa, Qumiulys (not around these days) and I kinda kicked things off. We would often comment on things, and post in here. Prior to that there would be the odd commenter here and there, but I think once people saw the interactions between us all, they realized we were awesome people, and the TAY community grew pretty quickly. They really are like a second family to me these days! Having met a lot of them in person helps. I bravely opened my house up to them way back in the day, not knowing what to expect by inviting a bunch of net strangers to my house all at once, but a bunch of QLD TAYbies rocked up to my place and we had a blast! It’s all been up hill since then! 🙂 Good people, good food, and video games all day! Hard to go wrong with that 🙂
How are things going, by the way?
Things are ok. Had my EEG brain scan this morning to find out where my leg twitching is coming from. Won’t know the results til maybe Thursday next week though.
Hopefully it’s nothing too serious. Unfortunately, when it comes to the brain it can cause all sorts of issues with other things.
Indeed. Just gotta keep my fingers crossed. Hopefully it’s not cos my brain has become infected as a result of the cyst leaking. That could get nasty, thought probably still preferable to some other potential candidates.
I was thinking more the pressure would cause unexpected symptoms
Well that certainly is a possibility (and likely to be the cause of some of my symptoms) but just have to wait and see where the signal is coming from. If it’s close to the area where my cyst is, it may very well be just that, but if it’s elsewhere, it might actually be more serious/permanent.
Only a couple of other groups have been as good as this one, and what they had in common was a bunch of nice people being good to each other, many of whom had had IRL meets. Toxic people tended to not last long – not because they were booted, but because they got ignored after a single “hey, we like nice people here”, they tend to go somewhere else pretty fast.
Because we leave that shit at the door. Ain’t no one got time for volatile comment sections
Well, we seem to accept that not everyone has the same opinion as us. Something that a lot of people don’t understand on the internet.
This is also true 🙂
Is it because we don’t care? Or that we know there’s not really anything we can do personally over the internet?
I have no idea ^^;;
Thank whoever started it, since it’s kinda had a self fulfilling momentum since then.
I, like many others, lurked scared for a while, but really liked what I saw and wanted to be a part of that so I worked up the courage to start posting.
Lurkers on the other side of the coin would see nothing worth joining and just move on to the next internet cesspit.
Imma call it awesomentum.
XCOM 2 Shenanigans
So I thought I’d post a cool mission I pulled off over the weekend in XCOM on my second playthrough. Thanks to building my AWC early one of my grenadiers has a ranger perk allowing her to be concealed even when the squad is revealed. Yes this makes for some awesome stealth grenades/rockets. So this one facility blowing up mission I managed to scout out a group of mutons and one group of snakes however I had the epiphany that XCOM’s aliens only trigger when you reveal them. So I moved my squad out of view of one mob, and ambushed the snakes. I then moved my stealthy grenadier into position and planted the explosives while the rest of the team spammed overwatch at the entrance. Cue sneaky exit with only 2 aliens killed! Suck it randomly generated mission =PNice!
I’m more of a ‘blow up everything between me and the objective’ kinda guy. Guns blazing. Grenades everywhere. Boom.
Let me know how that works out for you when you run into Chrysalids and Andromedons =P
I don’t think either of those have enough health for it to be a problem. The enemies I’m fighting at the moment though…
Yeah I faced the Andromedon as soon as I unlocked plasma weaponry.
It’s total BS, it takes like 4-5 of my squad hitting the thing to kill it twice. I’ve also unlocked Sectopods in my aggressive research and these guys have shit tons of health. My grenadiers with armor break are coming in crazy handy now. I am really really not looking forward to the final tier of enemies 🙁I find that about 75% of the time you only need to kill the Andromedon once in the first turn, and it won’t reach anyone once it’s transformed that turn, and that should only take ~2/3 hits with Plasma. Sectopods are a huge pain, as are the Defenseobots of death that I can’t remember the name of. Stasis is really useful against them, and it’s nearly mandatory to load up a hacking specialist with the upgraded mindjab thingy to help deal with all the late game mechs.Yeah but it trails its bloody acid all over the place!! :@ At the start of the game I had a mentality of killing everything I saw in my first or second turn but now with these health bars I’m being forced to kill the most dangerous enemy first and hope to god people survive for a second wave =PLast night I finished the Psi Ops facility and started training a rookie, so we’ll see how that goes. Also had a stroke of very un-XCOM-like luck, when I got the insta-kill proc on an Archon that appeared on my medic’s flank.Yeah I finished mine last night as well and my first recruit unlocked a max tier ability as his first move. Win. I’ve taken him into two battles so far and kind of underwhelmed by his utility? Maybe I’m just more comfortable with the 4 starting classes but all the psi ops abilities seem cc and support based in nature which. Here’s hoping I get a few better abilities as he keeps levelling.I can’t wait until I do a second run so I can plan to get the AWC up first thing. It’s too good of a bonus to miss out on.
Yeah it really makes for some interesting interactions; I think the chances of a bonus skill is pretty slim per promotion so far only 4 of my soldiers have them but goddamn if they aren’t crazy useful.
I must have been lucky. I’ve had three promotions after building it and one got a bonus. It wasn’t very useful (Covering Fire on an explosives Grenadier) but hey, it’s something!
My 2 best were run and gun on a grenadier (who then died), and armour shredding on a stealth ranger (who then died).
One of my grenadiers picked up Run & Gun. Awww yisss.
Lol now all they need is squadsight and they can shoot at anything from anywhere!
Hey @haggis:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/shadowrize/screenshot/499141028077674390
That was very clever of you Rize. You even managed a pun
That. Is. Amazing. I salute you good sir, you bring tears of the joyful kind to my sad, disillusioned eyes.
@sunsoar77
Well, you can still call them pachyderms, as it’s shorthand for “big grey thick-skinned mammals that you don’t want to make angry”, but the old group Pachydermata was described way back in the early 1800s IIRC. Later understanding showed this to not be a true group. Elephants are more closely related to hyraxes than to rhinos and hippos; rhinos are closer to antelopes; hippos are closer to whales and dolphins than to rhinos and elephants…
According to a recent episode I saw of QI, the half-life of “facts” is around 20 years, which means half the stuff I learned at uni is probably thought to be wrong now. 🙂
Sorry about destroying your childhood. 😉
Maybe not so much uni, depending on what you studied – I certainly encountered a bit of “to the best of our understanding, this thing is a thing”, which allows us to at least put a big asterisk next to it. That’s a vast improvement on school, where despite something being long disproved, plenty of teachers still just present it as fact because that’s easier that qualifying a statement with “this thirty year old textbook says the thing is a thing, whereas we now know it to be a whatsit because I keep up with my area of study”.
I read Zoology. Keeping up with evolutionary biology has been particularly interesting – pretty much the entire evolutionary development field has developed since I graduated, and genetics might as well have been rewritten from scratch at undergraduate level. 🙂
You’re right, though, academics do qualify knowledge a lot better – which is part of why communicating for example climate science is so hard… “We’re 95% certain of this” to a scientist is dead-set fact, to the media it’s “well there’s doubts about this, you’re not *really* sure are you…?”.
Anyways.
I’ll happily group myself, as an engineer, in with scientists when I say that we’re terrible salespeople. “We have 3-sigma confidence on this result” is not a sentence that makes any sense to most of the population.
It’s an amazing time to be learning science. They’re smashing atoms to bits in the LHC, they’re digging up the most astonishing fossils in China, massive debate about the origins of modern humans, a computer just won a game of Go, we just got photos of Pluto, and we’ve discovered vaccines that prevent cancer – my son’s generation may see the end of cervical cancer in women, thanks to the HPV vaccine (and possibly other cancers too!)
Science!!!
I’m going to meet @Sughly today. He better impress!
Brisbane better impress me too!
Impressius.
I remember that Sughly guy. He’s alright! He loves Chicken curry from Hanaichi as do I. Some day soon I ought to meet up with him again for another bowl! Hopefully I can fit it in the budget!
Hahaha he ate one today!
Turned down a double date with me and some babes for it though 🙁
awwww dang! Did you guys meet at Garden City or something?
We went around to various places but stopped at Garden for a bit
Cool! Wish I’d known. I may have been able to come see ya!
Footage of the new Valkyria game’s demo leaked:
http://gematsu.com/2016/02/40-minutes-valkyria-azure-revolution-battle-demo-gameplay-screenshots
It looks pretty bland. Bog-standard low-budget action game. Pretty disappointing, especially when the concept materials look so great. Looks like they might have just taken the Shining Resonance engine and slapped the Valkyria name on. 🙁
I choose to ignore all the bad points, and remain deluded by saying “well, at least I like the hair effects.”
Don’t get me wrong, if they localize it I’ll buy it.
But it really looks like Shining Resonance:
(And that kind of makes me sad that we never got any of the recent Shining games, pretty much since Tony Taka took over doing the art)
Yeah it looks like the enemies take about 30-40 hits more than they need to before they die.
WHAT!? No… NOOOO!! I hadnt watched anything on this yet because I was just like ‘woo new VC! I will buy this!’, but… where’s the strategy? Where’s the action points and team positioning and, and… *cries*
Yeah. It looks like a middling Action JRPG with a very nice art style. I’d want to play it if it was given any other name, but it shouldn’t have the Valkyria name attached IMO because that implies a very specific style of game that this one just… isn’t.
How come no one’s knocked off Valkyria anyway? That gameplay is so good. X-COM is kind of similar I guess.
Morning guys and gals!
So this laptop comp has got me pretty excited, as mine is just about gone now. It has no space bar, constantly freezes and is about 4 years old, so struggles playing most games. Hooray.
Soo many entries though! such slim odds.
All I can say is I hope a Taybie gets it at least 🙂
Spent a few hours doing my entry as a picture to go with the text, as I haven’t entered anything in AGES – so here’s hoping for the pay off! haha
HOW ARE YOU ALL!?!?!
I’m all sorts of messed up. Had a kinda severe asthmatic episode over the weekend which I’m still recovering from. Literally all of Saturday and Sunday is spent wheezing and short of breath. It was HORRIBLE. I seriously hate this disease. Such a kill joy.
Walking up stairs even takes my breath away at the moment. haha.
Good luck my friend! I too hope a TAYbie wins it as I’d hate to see it go to one of the random who suddenly appear only to post when a competition comes up.
That sucks dude hope your feeling better today. As for me I am doing good thanks for asking
Yeah i know what you mean.
And yeah – getting there. It will be a few weeks until i’m back to normal, as usually happens – but i was able to take the dog for a walk yesterday ,which is great. But i still can’t do proper exercise which sucks because i’m feeling like a fatty.
On one hand I hate it when apparent non-regulars pop out of the woodwork and win but at the same time there are far more visitors to the site than those who actively post in TAY, and the winner should be on merit. That said, I hope a TAYbie wins, and I hope that TAYbie is me. Or someone who actually needs it.
Exactly this.
We just like rooting for our own team. But it’s still best for it to go to the most deserving.
I’m just stoked with mine because i put my wife’s face in there, which i know irks her. hahahaha
Well I guess that is fair considering you take our breath away 😉
Do you want man kisses?
Because that’s how you get man kisses.
Anyone been following This is the Police, by Weappy? I backed it at the end of last year, and an early release for backers is supposed to be out on the 15th. First time I’ve backed a game before it was playable, but it looks a cool concept and $20ish wasn’t too bad. Backed Prison Architect back in Alpha 16 or so, which was totally worth it – they’ve done pretty well there.
I always wanted to back a boardgame on kickstarter because there has been some seriously amazing projects – but it works out being SO expensive once converted to AUD and adding shipping…
Look at the ones by Rule & Make, aussie designers so all their products are in AUD.
Also good game.
Oh nice – thanks for the heads up mate
Additional – holy shit – this is amazing!
http://www.ruleandmake.com/products/atlas-card-case
Also, damn their games are well priced.
Rise to Power is really a very neat little design. I missed Entropy, but Burger Up is going to be very cool, and they keep adding cool rules variants to it.
Anyone who is interested in Rock Band 4 but thinks the release price was stuuuupid:
https://www.ebgames.com.au/any/any?q=rock%20band%204&availability=onlineorstorestock
Game + Guitar = $99
Game + Guitar+ Mic + Drums = $249
Thanks to @cakesmith for the heads up, cause I just got the only PS4 one at my local store 😛
I let Rize know but here’s a few things you should know if you’re looking to pick it up (most of this will sound negative):
Unless you imported RB1 into RB2 and then into RB3, you won’t be able to get legacy songs from RB/RB2 anymore, as the export licenses have expired and Harmonix have said that legal reasons mean they can’t just make it available again so it’s highly unlikely it ever will.
If you can track down a copy of RB3 on the same console family as RB4, you just have to have played the game with the same profile as you want to export to. It does cost $15 though to export (on Xbone at least).
Most of the DLC is still available and Harmonix do weekly DLC song releases as well as work towards making all the legacy DLC work. There are a handful of songs that have had their licenses expire and you won’t be able to grab those anymore if you don’t already own them.
PS3 instruments will work with the PS4 copies. If you want to use XB360 instruments with the Xbone, you will need a legacy adapter, which you can’t get in Australia without importing and when you do they end up costing close to $80 AUD.
There is no online with the exception of leaderboards.
Harmonix see RB4 as a “platform” and so don’t intend to release a new game anytime soon. Instead, they are adding features via patches and updates.
Yep, that’s about it.
Really? I have a PS3 Rock Band 1 controller and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get it to read.
According to this chart it should:
http://forums.harmonixmusic.com/discussion/258920/the-rock-band-4-instrument-compatibility-chart
Might just be broken, I inherited from my brother so I have no idea how he treated it.
Honestly, I think that’s the best way to do it. The market got flooded with way too many different versions of (basically) the same game.
I would love a “Rock Band Premium” service where you could pay a small fee every so often and get access to all the songs on the network. Or even something like a “party pass” where you got unlimited access to all songs for 24/48 hours.
This would require them actually getting their download & purchase system working 100% (it was flaky as shit for me last night) fixing their dreadful UI, and actually having some ambition and implementing things people actually want.
I wonder if that’s a side of the box feature on the first wave of stock, and it’s being flogged off now to get rid of them before there’s too much widespread ‘false advertising’ claims at full price.
Great to see they thought so too. 😛
Nice, for $99 I’m tempted to just pick up another guitar even though I already have the game …
Based off my experience with it last night, the guitar sucks. 🙁 Mad Catz were too fucking cheap to even put a shoulder strap in.
NUMENERA: TALES OF THE NINTH WORLD
TONIGHT 8pm SA TIME
cc @blaghman @popdart5 @tech_knight
Oh yeah, anyone else see the thing about Lumberyard? This is just getting crazy.
Yeah, it’s interesting. I can’t see it getting that wide a pick-up, unless they drop an engine-seller (Gears 1 style), but more market contributors is never a bad thing (and them buying the rights to source redistribution access to CryEngine probably kept all the workers at Crytek employed for another fortnight).
“Free to use” and “no royalties” seems like a pretty compelling reason for people to pick it up though 😛
So I’m thinking my for my graphics card issue (since my GT630 is embarrassing me) I was going to pick up a GTX 750 Ti 2GB DDR5. It’s currently around the $200 mark but seems like a good middle-of-the road solution since I don’t want to spend for super high end and anything cheaper seems like a waste of time and money.
Presumably this will go ok with my 8 gigs of RAM and quad core i7 CPU. If the GPU is DDR5 then presumably my regular RAM should be too, right? If my regular RAM is DDR3 I should get a DDR3 GPU? I’m not 100% sure how to check that.
Absolutely no need to match your motherboard and GPU memory.
I’ve been out of the GPU game too long to make any comment around the 750ti. I’d look up some benchmark results for games you want to play to get a feel for where it sits.
Alright, if the RAM types don’t have to match that gives me more confidence about the 750 Ti. I think I can order it via mwave for around $185 which seems like a reasonable deal, and I’ve had good experiences with mwave previously. The next jump up seems a little too far for me, I’m certainly not interested in the GTX950 range which are currently in the vicinity of $400 – $500. I guess I could spring for the 4GB model instead of the 2GB though.
You should be able to get something like a 950 or 960 for less than $300 these days.
Right you are. mwave has an overlocked ASUS GTX950 2GB for $239 and an overclocked MSI GTX950 2GB for $240. Then we get into Windforce and STRIX and oh god it’s too complicated why. *curls into a ball*
RE: 2GB vs 4GB models – if you’re using 1080p monitor 2GB should be enough depending on how far you want to future proof. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
I just hate trying to compare the 950/960/970/980 performance to price points.
In terms of whether you get an MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, XFX card really shouldn’t have a great deal of impact on performance. Might be some small variations in specification but you shouldn’t see a dramatic change in performance once the rest of your system is taking into account.
950 ought to be fine at 1080p. Won’t be able to have all the toys turned up to ULTRA, but should get good textures at good framerate for most games. 🙂
Seconded. 950s are $235 – $270, 960s are $280 to $350. 750Ti is getting long in the tooth.
Windforce is Gigabyte for “we’ve put two fans on it” 🙂
Been playing Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen the past few nights. It’s pretty cool so far!
Though I don’t know if I’m playing incorrectly or something but this game is super hard. Like, I keep getting killed by normal bandit groups before I can even get to any big monsters 😛 Had to lower the difficulty from Normal to Easy and I’m still dying haha Feel like I’m missing something. Any tips from people who have played it? (I seem to remember @sernobulus playing it? Maybe @blaghman?)
I’ve just gone back to the first town and am just going to focus on doing all the side quests. Maybe I’m just not levelled up enough to do much yet.
I’ve only played a bit, but yeah, early levels are super important, and quests are the easiest way to knock them over. There’s also a bunch of enemies that will only be weak to like, one thing, and if you don’t have that, you’ll spend an hour sitting on a rock slowly plinking away at their seemingly infinite health bar until you give up (those bloody lizard-men are a pain unless you have an ice spell, at which point they’re utterly trivial).
Hah, any time I saw a bandit with a sword/shield I would just run away because they could kill me in a few shots and my daggers/bow didn’t scratch them.
I’ll just go this way and kill all the bunnies I see…
Are you going through a mountain pass? I remember pretty early on, there was a path that went inland (I seem to remember wolves in a mountain pass?) that lead to some relatively high level monsters without any real indication that it was a high level area. I eventually received a quest to go that way and had to dodge around a bunch of enemies because they were still very tough.
By first town do you mean the starting village, the military outpost? Presume you don’t mean Gran Soren – it’s a bit larger than a town. There’s a bunch of stuff to do in the starting town that’ll toughen you up a bit.
The very first place where you start. The fishing village. When the game started I just kinda went “OKAY LET’S GO!” and ran away 😛
Followed the story missions until I got to Gran Soren, got falsely confident after I recruited three Pawns so figured I’d explore a bit – everything kills me 😛 So the plan for now is to go back and “start again,” basically. Hopefully some side quests will reward me with some stronger armour/weapons or something.
EDIT: Haven’t actually ran into any actual monsters yet (outside of the story), just normal bandits/the big goblins were the main things I was struggling with.
Oh, yea, if you went further up the coast from Gran Soren, that area is a little brutal – got killed by a chimaera or an ogre quite a lot. I’d suggest being a somewhat of a completionist – finish every quest between the starting village and Gran Soren – GS quests will likely send you off in all manner of directions, so some might not be immediately viable.
Have you tried crying? You’re best bet may be to read some of the wiki’s for the game. Also maybe try and start off as a sword and board character? Don’t feel bad about dying, i died so many times when I first played it on PS3. Like, so many times.
I haven’t! Thanks for the tip!
Hm, maybe I will try different weapons. I already upgraded my class to Assassin because I thought it’d make me stronger (it didn’t :P) – they can use sword/shield too so I’ll give it a go!
Whatever class/vocation you choose determines how your stats increase in the game. From memory the basic vocations are something like
Fighter increases physical defense and health
Strider is pretty standard stat distribution
Mage increases magic defence and attack
Also I think Assassin increases physical attack (I think it has the highest in the game) but basically nothing else. =P
I see! I see!
More importantly, I need to find a place to buy new clothes. #FashionsDogma
I’m not too sure how gear progression works in the game. I know the best place to pick them up is the store near the inn but i don’t know how new stock works. If it’s tied to player level or quest progression I have no idea.
I just finished my first playthrough of that yesterday. Sunk 85 hours into it. My advice is:
– You can cheese a lot of things at lower levels by playing a range class. I know I got through quiet a few sticky situations by sniping things with a longbow as a ranger.
– Melee is really fun though. Personally found warrior the most enjoyable class.
– Striders/Rangers/Assassins are probably the most OP vocations at high levels.
– While your vocation determins your stats as you level up, it’s over all not hugely important. At later levels gear and augmentations tend to matter more than the stats you got while leveling, so experiment with classes and play what you want to play. That said, you will be at an advantage if you stick with one type of class.
– You earn more DP by killing things that give less experience, so it’s worth taking time to kill rabbits and stuff because the DP all adds up in the end.
– When you enhance gear you can enhance to level 3 right away if you have the materials. Don’t think you have to buy every level.
– After a certain point in the story you’ll be given a quest to give the shop keeper an idol. There’s 3 types: bronze, silver and gold. You can only give them one and the one you give them determines what new stock they get. It also gives you a discount at their store. Gold is the best, but don’t be too concerned if you don’t give them one. They get pleanty of good stock post game and you’ll get some good items from quest rewards and finding them in chests.
– The Black Cat can replicate items which can be really useful for getting materials you need to upgrade your gear.
– Don’t buy any of the weapons or armour at The Black Cat. They’re all way too expensive and pretty terrible. The only things I would suggest getting are maybe some of the capes or the eye patch helmet for looks (and the stats aren’t terrible) and the mage staff if you’re main pawn is a mage as that’ll cause them to self res if they’re defeated if they have it equipped.
– Some side quests become unavailable after you progress in the main story. You’d have to read a guide to find out which ones though.
– There’s a reputation system with NPCs. You know you’ve maxed out reputation when a bell rings when you talk to them and their cheeks glow. This can determine who you romance. It’s very easy to accidentally romance a person you didn’t intend. Just make sure the last person you talk to before initiating a quest in the main story to take back a fort is a person with max affection who you want to romance to make them your Beloved.
– The start of Bitterblack Isle can be done as low as level 30, but you’ll probably want to be higher level than that to do the whole thing.
– Always have a mage in the party to act as a healer. I wouldn’t recommend playing a mage yourself though. If you want to use magic go sorcerer.
– Don’t be afraid to just run past enemies if you’re struggling to kill them. Also don’t worry about running away from battle.
– There’s an eternal ferrystone in your storage. It can be used to port between Gran Soren and Cassardis as well as the portcrystals you’ve placed around the world.
– Put a portcrystral at the shadow fort as several quests take you there.
– When you pick up an escort quest from the notice board if you find it’s too hard for you and drop it you might not be able to pick it up again, so be sure you’re ready to do it.
– An easy way to do escort quests is to place a portcrystal at the place you need to escort them before taking the quest and then take the quest and use your eternal ferrystone to teleport there. You’ll complete the quest instantly that way.
– Wolves hunt in packs.
Woah, thanks!
Especially for the “wolves hunt in packs” thing! Why don’t my pawns tell me this useful info!? 😛
I started playing Alien Isolation last night. Worst idea. Way too much creep and tension and dark and.
Also I’ve died about a million times now. Once to the alien, when wandering into the transit thingo and not being able to see where the activation point to close the door was (from what I can tell on my second run, there isn’t one and you just have to kind of be decently inside) and the rest from the people just after that, where you find the data scanner hacking thing after that girl spots you and runs off. I don’t know if it’s because I’m playing on Hard or what, but it seems impossible to sneak past them at all or not have a guy suddenly appear behind you or what. And the rewire distraction things seem to do sweet FA in helping either.
They’re showing Alien in the cinema next Friday night, don’tcha know!
I don’t!
Well they are! I’m going!
Which cinemas?
Just Event George St I’m pretty sure.
I once got forced to play that by @cakesmith while he recorded me. He never put it on the internet. Pooped myself for no reason.
Unless it’s now part of his private files collection.
(I got up to the first alien encounter and that was about it. It did not go well :p)
Scary games are too scary for me.
I can’t wait to try the VR mode on it, even if it’s supposed to be not all that great an implementation/”experimental for a reason”.
I love scary games because I hate them and I hate myself. But I don’t hate myself enough to try with VR. You are a braver soul than I.
You say that now.
Then I throw off the headset after all of five seconds of use.
But that’s five more seconds than I could handle. Good job, you!
I still have those files. I was going to upload them but the audio quality is just terrible due to my idiocy when setting up the recording settings.
I would still like to get you to play more of it.
I’ll go get my brown pants.
Work-related rant.
So the acquisition is going through and as the team is being restructured I’ve had the promotion carrot dangled in front of me again, with the new structure being effective from 31 March – so still a ways off. The current indication is that I’ll get my senior title and basically be the 2IC of the “core” team, which will be headed up by one of the current seniors (which is great for her, fantastic opportunity). That said, nothing is set in stone so I’ll believe I’m getting a promotion when it’s formally offered.Yesterday I was chatting with my boss and he indicated that as we integrate the teams (the acquiring company’s smaller team is being absorbed into ours, he’ll be staying on as manager) there’ll be a lot of work to go around and he needs to make sure everyone is able to step up. He basically indicated he expects there’ll be some long hours/late nights involved. Now this is no problem, I’m comitted and willing to work harder as needed. But the way he said it rubbed me the wrong way because typically I’m in at 9am and out at 5pm. I sometimes work through lunch, but not always. The fact is, I’m just not busy enough to come in early or stay back late like some of my colleagues, but I am constantly, and I mean constantly asking for more work, more responsibility, asking if there are things I can help with to lighten his load etc. I’ve made it clear that I have the capacity, am willing and able, to take on more work.
The thing is to him it seems to be about the perception of who is working harder rather than whoever actually us. There are people in the team to work from 8 to 6 almost every day. Now he knows full well I get all my work done, that I’m a high performer, and have capacity to take on more. On the other hand some of our 8-6ers seem to be struggling with equal or lesser workloads. So who’s the better employee? The one who works 7 or 8 hours a day or the one who works 9 or 10? Who would you give more responsibility to? I went to bed so irritated last night because I feel like the thing that’s holding me back is that I don’t waste enough time in the day that I need to sit at my desk until after everyone else is gone just to stay on top.
I had to stop by his office this morning just to drill home the point: hey dude, you know that chat we had yesterday? If you have extra work going, need to shuffle files to someone with extra capacity? You’re looking at him. It’s me. I have that extra capacity, just like I’ve been jumping up and down waving my fucking arms telling you for two goddamn years. Utilise me.
Maybe not in those words exactly, but I think I made my point.
Now, I continue to wait.
I’m not sure what it is but I’ve noticed that mentality in a lot of companies. First person in last person out appears to matter more than how much work a person gets done and how efficient they are with their time? I have never ever stayed back late in a job, at the same time I’ve never run late on any of my work either. This is something I’ve had since I was a kid where I’d finish exams a full hour to 90min earlier and just be sitting in the exam room until the rest of the world finished.
However in the workplace it looks a lot better if you come in early for no apparent reason and leave late for no apparent reason. Completely moronic. I also take issue with taking on more work as other team members merely cos I work faster; if we’re on equal professional standings I expect my team to carry as much as weight as me. If I’m expected to do more because I have more time then I also expect my pay and job to upgraded accordingly. Pay to play bitches!
tl:dr companies are run by idiots.
Part of me thinks the reason the extra work hasn’t come to me was because actually letting me have all the work and responsibility I was clamouring for would prevent them being able to justify not promoting me, setting aside I’m already taking on several tasks that previously fell to seniors who left and it was up to me to pick up those pieces in addition to my regular role – something my “colleagues” have not had to do, yet still somehow struggle to complete a day’s work in the usual office hours.
Yeah see when that happens to me I take on the new responsibilities for a few months, learn from them and then use my expanded skillset to catapult myself into a much better paying role at a new firm. Since graduating in 2010 I’ve had 7 jobs =P
That said I might’ve finally found a decent place to work that will allow me to expand my career internally as opposed to making me look elsewhere.
Well part of it depends.
A lot of bosses don’t have an issue with people working 9-5 if they get the work done. The problem they can have is if there is stuff that has to be done but because it is 5pm the person leaves without getting it done.
Yeah but usually its the same bosses that think people working 9-7 or 8-6 are actually getting work done. Don’t get me wrong I’ve come in earlier to work or worked through lunch often enough to make sure my work gets done however getting work done gets unnoticed much less often than showing up earlier or later.
The problem is when work gets done and if you’re doing a good job no one is meant to notice what you do; however if you make a show of being in the office before everyone else or being the last to leave it’s automatically assumed you must be very hard working which isn’t often the case.
Absolutely agree. But by the same token for ever efficient worker who does 9-5 at 120% of normal output there are 3 others who are 9-5 clock watchers who are at 50%
It comes down to having ways to track what people are doing which if your job is to make sure no body needs to see what you are doing it gets tough.
For me the biggest item is if something needs to be done, will they be there to do it.
Yeah, I’ve had the old “efficiency” talk at my work before.
I actually got pulled aside and got told that I didn’t appear to be “working hard enough”.
I asked them to check my stats. So they did. In the previous 3 months, I was doing 45% of our workload in a team of 5. Out of all the feedback we got (there’s a link when we send the case closed email asking for it), 90% of it was for me and 100% of it was positive.
I got employee of the month after they looked at that.
I no longer work in support and don’t have to work towards KPIs anymore (thank god).
But yeah, I got singled out because I was working more efficiently than the other members in my team (who don’t get me wrong, were hard workers).
One of the good things about the company I previously worked for is they would look at and email the stats company wide on a regular basis.
Separated the busy unproductive people from the efficient “slackers” right quick.
I’ve worked at a KPI driven organisation before – 90% of the distributed help desk just sat and sniped all the easy tickets (like account unlocks) to boost their stats, and I was the only one crunching through the complicated (but at least interesting) issues.
I told them where to shove their stats the only time it ever came up.
Edit: it got so bad at one point that someone in, say Sydney, would take a ticket for a local task in Brisbane, email a Brisbane support person to please go do it, and then close it in their own name so it counted on their stats.
In short, fuck support work.
Why is it people laugh and agree when you say something like “Man, i could MURDER a burger right about now”, yet as soon as you say the same thing about a prostitute you’re suddenly on a watch list.
On a semi-related note, who here’s got some bail money?
Reminds me of my annoyance with GTAIV as I didn’t see why I should pay $70 for a prostitute when I could go into a diner and get a $1 burger that served the same purpose.
There must be something special in the soda of Los Santos.
You can’t murder the burger and get you $1 back though
We’re only half way in, you can start pounding out prostitute jokes yet!
Tried a trick, wouldn’t fit, all she did, took the tip?
Just the tip?
It doesn’t count if it’s just the tip
heheh I’ll leave that up to you to figure out I think 😉
All I take away from this is, man, I could murder a burger right about now.
So wikitionary’s word of the day a few days back was chuchotage , n :
The interpretation or translation of speech in a whisper to a single person in proximity to other people.
I still can’t figure out what it is…
Like when someone is giving a speech in a foreign language and an audience member has a translator whispering what the speaker is saying to them!
(I had to google for a better definition haha)
So like if you and your mate are at a conference and the speaker is talking in mandarin which you speak, but he doesn’t, so you whisper the translation to him, that’s chuchotage.
So Cyanide and Happiness have just kickstarted their own version of Cards Against Humanity
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cyanideandhappiness/joking-hazard
Ugh, i want to back it, but I don’t have anyone to play with.
Do what I do and play with yourself?
*badumtish*
Beat me to it..
I always was quick to the finish.
Ha ha. =(
*suggestive eyebrow raising*
That’s pretty much the same problem I have too. =P
I’ve never been a big fan of Cyanide and Happiness. Some good ones but too many of them miss the mark for me to follow regular
I’m the same.
I just check now and then, but there is some genuinely good stuf..
The game looks like it could be a hoot, though
Yeah, I generally wait for people I follow on twitter to retweet the good ones when the come around. Still, I think this actually works really well as a card game. Mostly just for when you’re drinking with friends (just like CAH)
Oh god, reading some of the backer rewards are fantastic.
Bad Customer ServiceTwo Deck Combo, except we will “accidentally” ship you a dead houseplant instead of your games and be really rude when you email us about it, but then eventually send you THREE copies of the game several months later with a passive aggressive note.
I backed it!
Now to wait for it to be released and never ever play it because, what are friends?
A TV show from the 90s.
Someone mentioned the other day that Friends could be rebranded these days as “That 90’s Show”.
Wait, bring it down for pax. We can play it then!
Just backed.
@haggis http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/09/uk-pun-championships-comedy-lee-nelson-masai-graham
Also Hi @strange!
I’m going to knead to enter that next time it’s on.
My chill sprouts are all slowly turning white pls don’t die 🙁
Time to transplant? Are they getting sun?
Even too much sun recently? Particularly if they’ve not had full sun before now if you’ve moved them. They could be getting sunburnt… Make a cover out of some shade cloth and garden stakes.
I have to give my tomatoes some shade when they crop in the middle of summer. Otherwise plants drop leaves like crazy and then end up with crap tomatoes.
I’ve only just started putting them out to get some sun the last couple of days, otherwise they’ve been living under a light indoors. Only done maybe an hour or so each afternoon. It doesn’t look like sunburn though, just like… the green has disappeared from the leaves.
Just finished playing Firewatch. It was pretty good. I think the ending is going to be a bit contentious though. Personally wasn’t a fan of it, but I think some people will love it. The voice acting was top notch, as you’d expect from such a narrative driven game. The character Delilah reminded me a lot of Roz from Frasier, both in tone of voice and personality, so that’s who I imagined I was talking to the whole game.
Some of my year seven students tried to guess my age today.
Guesses ranged from late 30s to 50s.
*sobs*
I assume you’re going to grade them based on those answers.
100 subtract guessed age = final score.
Year 7 students think anyone over 20 is old. =/ Don’t take it to heart
Oh, I don’t really care. Just thought it was amusing.
It doesn’t help that my beard is growing back, and I’m balding 😐
Maybe you should’ve just said to them all. “you all fail!”
I didn’t think you looked that old
Thanks Scree!
they’re dumb kids. Anyone over 20 is old.
And to me anyone younger is 12 😛
30s I can understand, but you? 50s?
Dear gods, kids these days.
@thecracks: they probably said 50 because they knew it was wrong and were being assholes. Because Year 7.
OOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alright, I posted the other day but I was lazy.
I’m taking orders for the bookmarks, I will subsequently post stuff now.
@morkai Here you are
@redartifice asked price.
Bookmarks are $3.00 each, but if people buy a batch, we can do a deal. Please note that I do not want any money now, I just want to know who would like what, so I know how much extra to print up.
Legend of Zelda Twilight princess series
http://imgur.com/a/zhwNg
We <3 Katamari series
http://imgur.com/a/OskA4
Pokemon series
http://imgur.com/a/MxBWL
JSRF series
http://imgur.com/a/3GQx5
Persona 4 series
http://imgur.com/a/iZiwC
Splatoon series
http://imgur.com/a/CxlW6
The unfinished Nostalgia series
http://imgur.com/a/Gpafh
These do not have the backs done as yet
Put me down for an entire set of JSRF and Dipp, Ichigo and Prince from the Katamari series please. 🙂
All done. =D I hope to get them printed up in March
I’ll need to look at it later but I’m looking to probably get 5 of the Pokemon ones. Just need to decide which ones.
People of Sydney (and probably Canberra). Western Sydney Megagames Society is hosting another Megagame on 17/4/16. I put my name in the hat as a moderator which is a slight problem because I was kinda hoping to be in Brisbane that weekend.
This game, Brave New World, is a geopolitical thingy set in the near future with aliens and whatnot. Go join in. A few of us played in the last one, which was a fantasy setting with lots of magics being used to blow apart the continent. It was rad. This one will be rad.
Go join now.
Edit: There may not be aliens. I honestly don’t know. I should know but that would mean that I did my job and read the draft rules so that I could give input.
NUMENERA: TALES OF THE NINTH WORLD
@popdart5 has a tamed lizard cassowary part invisible beastie being led around by the nose and @tech_knight is apparently a crack shot. Also the dice gods hated @blaghman, until they didn’t.
Thanks for playing guys!
I can now do tons of damage and it is a glorious feeling.
You’re next, Kay!
Picked up Evangelion 3.33 on Blu-ray this arvo.
I might marathon the three of them this weekend…
Just finished Firewatch. Really awesome game, but the ending was a little underwhelming. Which might have been the point.
Sorry for the repost but as I posted last night, it reached the bottom of page 3.
I’m just posting the link otherwise it’ll take me a while to post it all again. It’s about the bookmarks (of course)
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/02/talk-amongst-yourselves-365/comment-page-3/#comment-3614420
I would like a Prince and 2 Katamari Kings please
PC Hardware Techies!
I need some help! So, im running an i5 4690k with 16gb Ram, GTX 970 G1 Gaming… everything is running on stock. no OC.
everything was air cooled. in the last 3 months however my CPU has been idling at around 46-54 degrees and hitting 70 degrees under game load. figuring my cooler was starting to go, as even when i first installed it it was idling around 40. So yesterday, i bought a Deepcool Maelstrom 120 liquid cooler, installed it, and now its idling at 46 degrees, that is well above the 24-30 that i expected. also the exhaust side of the 120mm fan is blowing into the radiator not the other way around (can be done both ways) Any thoughts?
to cross the obvious one on the list, i usually use Arctic silver thermal compound (yes i know how to apply it properly without insulating the cpu 🙂 ) but of the 100 pc’s or so ive built, i decided that the compound already applied to the Maelstrom cooler would be sufficient.
Liquid coolers have intake and exhaust fan don’t they… To pass air over the cooling block/reservoir? (Never used liquid cooling but have read a bit)
Is it possible exhaust fan is on backwards? Pulling air from both sides onto the cooling block so it’s not working very well?
You don’t have to use a push & pull method with fans for radiators with liquid cooling, but for better cooling it’s something that would benefit you for sure.
nope… only come with a single fan… can be mounted either way, but it is generally recommended to have the exhaust side blowing into the radiator which is how ive set it up…
Man those are the temps I see on my stock intel cooler, there’s something wrong there for sure. Ideally you want them the fans to be set as intake fans bringing in fresh air to the radiator & case & in the front of the case is possible as well. Cause to me it sounds like the fans might be orientated the wrong way is all. As you said you should really be seeing high 20’s or low 30’s at idle depending on your room temperature & probably high 50’s low 60’s at load.
Unless you have an abnormally hot 4690k, I dunno. Also are the fans headers plugged into the CPU fan header on the motherboard so they ramp up with CPU temps & cool efficiently?
fans are on correct headers and running at absolute max speed…
abnormally hot cpu was my other thought and its looking more likely by the minute…
Yeah something sounds off and not your fault at all, could even be motherboard sensors are whack & reporting false information, thus thinking temps are hotter than they really are etc.
I can’t find any photos of the back side of the radiator – are there mounts for a second fan?
yeah but completely unnecessary. temps should be WAY lower…
Don’t expect miracles from a sealed liquid cooling system. They’re usually only slightly more efficient than standard air cooled ones.
This was the impression I got – I nearly went for an AIO liquid cooler for my last build, but did a bit of reading and the benchmarks were almost identical to standard air coolers
Unless you opt for a 240mm or 360mm radiator then, yeah basically what i’ve seen.
Very hard to say given you’ve built a few pc’s before. Unlikely to be that it’s not sufficiently clipped down and applying enough pressure etc., but hard to say without looking.
Your idle temp could be just the Australian summer giving it a hard time. Up here I’ve seen mine go high in summer, and under load, 70 is not really unexpected.
Was there much dust in the original cooler you were using? I have to clean mine out a couple of times a year as the airflow gets impeded.
As for the new cooler, damn near impossible to say without looking at it. Generally though, in a single fan config, taking air from the outside, and blowing in over the radiator will give better results than blowing out (I assume you’ve got the fan mounted on the case, then the radiator attached to the fan, and not the other way round?). If you’re using a 2 fan config (one on each side of the radiator, it will produce nearly the same results if they both blow in or out.)
Here’s an article that shows a bunch of different configs and the results for each.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/which-is-the-best-configuration-for-120-mm-liquid-cooling-fans/
ok so thats the other thing. the tightness.
im going to explain this as best as i can..
the backplate setup has four threaded screws that when inserted, stick out on top of the motherboard. the block sits on top of the CPU, screws going through the brackets.
now the round caps that tightn the bracket onto the backplate, have a hole through the centre of the phillips head cut, so as you tighten them the screw from the backplate starts coming through that hole, eventually to the pointwhere it pushes the screw driver out. not from that point they can not be tightened by the screwdriver as it wont fit.
the screws still feel as though they arent very tight as i can even tighten them furthe by hand. my guess is that this mechanism is in place to prevent overtightening…
They should be tight. Not finger tight, but screwdriver tight. I’ve had a look at some pics of installed ones, so I know the type of screw you’re talking about. They should be tightened until they can’t be turned any more, as the pressure on the cpu is very important in the efficiency of the cooling. You may have to get something like a small allen key, or star shaped screw driver, or perhaps a flat head one and tighten it as much as possible. Don’t like go he-man on it or anything once the screw stops turning, but the likelyhood of you over tightening is very unlikely. Usually they are threded in such a way that you will physically only be able to do so to a certain point.
the groove is way too shallow for a flat driver, and allan key is unsuitable. screw actually practically sticks out of hole and it is impossible to tighten any more. only option i have, is to use these nuts that were on my previous cooler…
http://i.imgur.com/pBzhJsl.jpg
kind of scared of over tightening them and damaging the board/cpu….
Well extremely unlikely you would damage the cpu. If anything you’d crack your motherboard. Weird that you said the screws are loose though. If you’re able to screw them in further with your fingers, they’re not in tight enough. I dunno what kind of “tool” you could use to tighten them further without actually having them in hand, but you might have to hack one together if you don’t have a flathead capable of turning them, or one of those more star shaped ones small enough to fit in the hole, but large enough to also be able to turn it. Trust me though, if you’re able to tighten them more with your fingers, they’re not tight enough. They should be putting an almost scary amount of pressure on the cpu. I dunno if you’ve ever dealt with Dell or HP machines before, but they often put springs under their screws to force you to push the screw down far enough to reach the threaded hole. Having those springs is a way to ensure that sufficient pressure is put on the cpu. Even the stock intel push pin ones require a substantial amount of pressure to push the pins through before the will catch.
Just make sure you have the board lying on a flat surface, preferably with some kind of foam or cardboard under the whole surface of the board, and that will reduce the likely hood of anything nasty happening when you tighten them.
The intel ones are horrid though. Get them 90% and they’ll pop out when you do the other corner. Repeat a few times and they can start to fail to catch properly at all.
Yeah they’re not the most ideal solution, but at least they’re easy enough to deal with most of the time. It’s usually only once you’ve had them installed for a while, and have to remove them and put back that they’ve ever really become a problem for me.
Last night I spent forever trying to sneak around and get by the Alien. Then after all that, managed to get myself eaten when a surprise “hold LT to hold breath” prompt came up after roughly a million hidings in a storage locker, and I couldn’t figure out which button that referred to in time. Then another time after successfully doing that and waiting til it was gone to release, but it still heard me somehow and darted around and got me. And then was surprised to find out it could actually crawl into the vents with you. Worst.
Also one of the chilli sprout leaves had fallen off this morning RIP 🙁
In better news, apparently a parcel arrived for me this morning. GPU must have arrived! \o/
Feeling your gardening pain…
Trying some new heirloom tomatoes – put 16 seeds in, 4 actually germinated and sprouted, 2 gone in one hot day, 2 left that are just putting on their second set of leaves.
Hoping they make it through.
Not enough people say “gangoolies” any more.
It’s a crime.
Well if it’s a crime I can understand why people don’t say it anymore…. =P
Goongala!
Gorgonzola!
And I said to him “Hey, badabing badaboom!”
It’s a perfectly cromulent expression.
Great Googly Moogly!
I haven’t ever heard that expression used. Was it a 90s Australianism I missed? Reference to the Indian cricketer?
Yeah – it was what people said when they referenced their balls.
“right in the gangoolies!”
I’ve heard goolies, but not the gangoolies.
I’m pretty sure they were interchangeable/dependent on groups
Yay! FIL is leaving today, we’ve got the house to ourselves again – I was getting so sick of wearing pants.
@pupp3tmast3r
XCOM fun
Going to finally be able to sink a few hours in tonight, but a quick half hour this morning trying to sabotage an Advent facility was fun. I was trying to make better use of my scout, having her spot alien positions and then having the rest of my squad clean up. I was going to try having her sneak in and plant the explosives, the front door was covered from the inside by one mob (Archon, 2x vipers) and their detection radii overlapped the target location by one tile, so I figured they might move slightly and sent her around the back, but there was another mob (Archon, 2x mutons) just outside the back door. Engaged the front mob and killed them without taking a hit (good luck, more than anything, the archon missed my medic) then I had to go to work, so we’ll see how the rest goes tonight.Yeaahhhh stealth attack! I also love blowing up aliens in a building and having them fall through the floor and die. For what it’s worth if you find that there are guards around an objective you can use the portion of your squad that’s already been revealed to draw them out and then use your concealed squadie to plant the bomb and evac. P.S. hope you’ve been levelling up some grenadiers with armor shredding…. Also with Archons have you unlocked the counter-attack ability on any of your Rangers? or the Hellweave item?No hellweave, but yeah, Bladestorm, wow. Had an officer mark my melee ranger, and a heavy lancer rush her – took out the lancer with her counterattack and then the officer in the next round. Might do a run though on easy once I’ve finished my first run and try and do a whole squad of rangers. My gunslinger generally has AP rounds equipped (-5 armour), my gunner-grenadier has shredding. Crit chance for my gunslinger seems really high (I haven’t looked at the numbers), I’ve had a couple of occasions where she’ll use that ability to shoot at every enemy in sight and get 2-3 crits from 3-4 attacks.Yeah I’m really glad I did 6 of each class and split them up evenly across the trees; comes in so handy when abilities that seem useless early game become integral for late game progression like shredding. That said I have massively neglected building any items in the foundry as I stockpiled resources to upgrade my weaponry and armor ASAP….. Which in retrospect doesn’t seem like a great idea =P I am starting to feel a bit fatigued with how much health some of these enemies have though….Just for the sake of contrast compared to your make-up, I currently have a total of nine people, of which 0 are rangers (becoming a ranger in my squad is a death sentence). It’s real balanced, y’all.Christ what difficulty are you playing on?? I’m not venturing anywhere past Veteran.Veteran, Ironman. I lose the occasional soldier here and there, and I’ve had 3 missions that were utter trainwrecks, and I mostly can’t be bothered buying new soldiers (I have enough supplies that I can pop a new squad of six rookies immediately, but the missions are often too dangerous for me to bother buying some now to try and level them up).Ironman… yeah no. Maybe on my fifth attempt lol. Still 0 rangers?? Why not recruit a few and run one rookie with your regular squad? It’s what I do; I keep 2 high level soliders and rotate the rest regularly. That said if it’s a main mission I take my best operatives in. That said Ironman would punish any mis-step pretty harshly.Got a few friends coming over on the weekend, might break out one of my favourite oven dinners – it’s kind of a chicken and mushroom pastry log/roll thing?
2 large or 3 small serves.1 sheet of puff pastry
400-500g Chicken Fillets (I normally use breast meat, but I think thighs would work just as well)
200g mushrooms
100-150g tasty stuffing stuff – a mix of olives or capers and cheese is good, cheese and chilli is also delicious, chorizo would be a good as well.
Preheat oven to 180
Slice the mushrooms 2-3mm thick and make a single layer of them across 2/3 of the pastry sheet
Slice the chicken into slices around 1cm thick and layer them over the mushrooms
Put the rest of the ingredients along the centre of the chicken
Roll it!
Place it on a baking tray, seam down.
Bake for 40-45 minutes.
Sounds really easy and tasty. The perfect dish
You know what else would go well in the middle – slices of brie.
It really does. We do a variant of what @spadge described from time to time, any fancy cheese works well in it, likewise avocado, rashers of bacon, caramalised onions, sundried tomato, fetta, olives.. You can also do a pastry-less version, just wrap the outside with baking paper & tie it up with some kitchen twine. Comes out just as good.
Three (now four) posts in a row? I should probably get back to work. We’ll never get to page 6 at this rate.
TAY is reaching the end of its life 🙁 Page 4 on a Thursday is a busy week these days….
It’s always quiet at the start of the year. Picks up around the major conferences.
Also, Twitter.
Yes but Twitter….. EWWWWWWW =P
In the old days, we used to get to the teens. Most of those posts were filler or short posts that are more at home on twitter.
Remember Page 18? that was horrible.
but yeah. mostly twitter.
Page 6 is no longer a necessity for dad jokes, I propose Dad Joke Friday’s!
NOTE: May or may not coincide with pants off Friday’s. Can be used to provide even more punny jokes but possibly not of dad joke variety.
You know, looking at this Cyanide and Happiness “Killing Joke” Kickstarter – it really annoys me how they add stretch goals.
They only unlock stretch goals if people do inane things to promote their brand, therefore, while they have raised $480,000 of their mere $10,000 goal, they have only unlocked a single bonus.
And the bonus unlocked overnight for all the immense effort people put in was a simple extra 10 cards…
To me, this just seems to go completely against what kickstarter is – you get bonuses for being an early adapter, not for being a brand whore.
I mean, one of the current targets is for someone to get a “killing joke” tattoo… which is likely to happen…
Does this not seem like insanity to anyone else??
Still… the game is tempting.
Eh, it’ll be available afterwards, and it looks pretty simple.
I’d rather back an interesting design
Insanity? Cyanide and Happiness?? I think the two themes go together =P
I looked at their Kickstarter goals as one big comic thread which to be fair given the what it’s for. Makes sense xD
I backed it. The game looks decent. But yeah, the rewards tiers shit is pretty stupid.
I agree more money should equal more stretch goals buuuut the reward tiers are all basically different versions of preorders with a few gimmicks thrown in (that were all gone immediately because they only offered one one each).
All that money is going into providing a copy of the game, and the shipping. While obviously a larger pool of funds received means more profits in general, I can appreciate why getting the audience to promote the brand for them is a greater incentive for them to improve the product.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, as someone doing final year Marketing i think what they are doing is GENIUS from a brand perspective, and quite in line with said branding.
But as a kickstarter it seems a little off.
It’s a weird contradictory feeling, that;s for sure.
Question:
You’re at your preferred supermarket. What three items do you take to the checkout to freak out / confuse / mislead the cashier the most?
I feel any answer to this question that involves “Condoms + …” is too obvious.
cable ties, lube & a trolley full of cucumbers.
Eggs, skewers, barbeque cooking coals.
Even I don’t know what they’re for.
Curtis Stone cookbook
Large knife
Stain remover
Rope, carving knife, garbage bags.
The biggest lump of pork belly possible
Tub of lard for roasting
Optifast diet shake
Two BBQ chickens and lube.
Condoms and/or lube just brings every other purchase into question doesn’t it? I think once I might’ve bought bacon, hash browns, milk and condoms once. I was out of condoms and, thinking ahead, also purchased breakfast.
BBQ Rib Sauce
Quick-eze
Toilet plunger
as a guy, tampons, girlie undies and tomato sauce would do the trick I reckon 😉
Puppy from the pet store, circular saw blade from the hardware store, and a pack of red candles.
Whipped Cream, a barbie doll and a 5 pack of underpants.
Deodorant, Matches, Airhorn
bleach, disposable gloves & lighter fluid.
Dog food, spoon, mouthwash.
– Hot Roast chicken.
– Baster.
– 270g bottle of lube.
Wait it’s Thursday afternoon already? Are you sure? I could’ve sworn it’s only like… Wednesday morning, at best.
At least it isn’t after 5 already. Yesterday I went to speak to a couple of team members to find they had all gone home already
So did any of the TAYbies win that gaming laptop comp? They closed entries at 10am yesterday, and said they would email the winner within 24hrs…
… thought I might’ve had a chance too. Damnit. I think the only person I’d be happy losing to is Gooky, his entry was pretty rad.
Don’t they normally post an article with the winning entries?
Oh yeah, I’m sure they will. I was bored at work so I went through the T&C’s (my entry was based on a pretty violent situation so I wanted to make sure it didn’t violate any rules), it said they would pick a winner and contact them within 24hrs.
Then again, the last time I won a competition on here I didn’t find out until the article was released, and didn’t receive the item for like… 2-3 months. So… I could still have won!
Here’s hoping anyway
When there’s 600+ entries the 24 hour timeframe is a bit optimistic.
Yeah that was what I was thinking when I read it.
I’m like ‘guys, you know this is a legally binding contract, right?’
Got my fingers crossed for a dishonourable mention.
I hope it’s announced in an article, as it would mean i still have a small glimmer of hope, as I aint got no email.
Going on past comps I’d actually expect the winner to be announced tomorrow afternoon on here…
God… fingers crossed so hard.
Speaking of competitions, I just won a Corsair 7.1 surround headset from PC Case Gear. Those guys are the best.
That’s your win for the month; no laptop for you now!
Nooooooooo TAKE THE HEADPHONES BACK!
Well done, mate.
I entered the same comp, but looks like i didn’t win 🙁
I’m glad someone here scored, though!
*epic high five*
I’m not wanting to get your hopes up, but…
There’s a pretty good chance that you can have these if you want them. I already have a pretty great wireless headset at home which I got on special a while back, so I probably won’t need these ones. I’ll let you know once I receive them and compare them to my current set.
It’s ok man – I have a set of Thermaltake ones somewhere which are pretty ok (which i coincidentally won a while back).
Since moving i can’t find the damned thing, though. I seriously hate my brain for forgetting where things are.
No biggie – I can’t see a situation in which I’m going to need 2 mic’d headsets
I know one.
X-TREME GAMING!
Two screens. Two headsets. Twin flightsticks. Playing competitive LoL.
Mountain dew at the ready.
The most unrealistic part of that scenario is me playing LoL.
#Dota4Lyf
I am sorely tempted to restart my XCOM 2 game with some quality of life mods and the Long War ones =O
Anyone else doing their run with any decent mods? I was looking at SMG, Leadership, and a few customization mods like face paint and military patterns for armor.
What are the Long War mods?
They launched 3 mods when the game launched – SMG weapon (all 3 tiers), Leadership mod allows you to upgrade the GTS and train a soldier with a new set of leadership perks (catch is only one leader per mission) and a Centurion Muton (aka Muton leader with a War Cry ability).
I am using so. many. mods for my second run.
I mostly stuck with cosmetics for the first run, out of paranoia at losing my save (which has been pretty widely reported in comments for some mods), but there are some crazy good quality of life mods out there.
The camera angle mod, the one which removes the artificially coded-in timed delays after actions before relinquishing control, numerical indicators for enemy health, so you’re no longer squinting and pressing your face close to count sectopod health bars, an importer to automatically set costume customization for characters you grab from the character pool… So much great stuff.
There’s also a tonne of new classes and weapon re-balances + cheats, and I’m very keen to try some of them out. Late game my blade-dancer ranger became completely fucking useless compared to my shotgun ranger thanks to shithouse scaling issues. Straight buffs to underpowered items are probably ‘cheating’, but when it’s simply the result of shitty balancing the renders some builds useless, I won’t lose any sleep over using it.
As for cosmetics, you should give the Steam workshop a look. There are a TONNE of new tattoo mods, the berets are pretty amazing, and some of them unlock all the variants of armour so that you can still keep using dodgy resistance fighter DLC pack gear for appearance while wearing Warden armour, use spidersuit/exosuit tier appearances for the higher-tier wraith/war armours. There’s some which unlock the character-level requirement for access to the cooler customization options, so you can have the skull bandana on a rookie, for example.
Yeah I caved and restarted last night; running the beret mod, military camo mod, mass effect camo mod, unlock all customizations, few more tattoo options, retroactive AWC mod, and finally the SMG and leadership mods. I’m kind of tempted to run an Avatar Progress delayer i.e. more slots before it can be completed. I found it rather overtuned even on rookie in my first playthrough and unless you aggressively plan for rapid expansions you’ll end up not being able to access facility missions.
Yeah, the first time that timer hits, you really need to have a resistance comms up.
Wow. Aldi are selling a 3D Printer for $499 next week.
And a 3D printing pen for $80. 1kg filament for $35
I wonder if there are any Aldi stores over here…
Nope. Not built yet. Bollocks.
To be honest, I wouldn’t waste the money. Aldi electronic stuff is (from my experience) pretty flimsy. You’d be better off spending a few hundred more & going to Officeworks for something. I wish I could waste the $$ on a Makerbot 3D printer though, those things are nice.
I don’t think I’d buy the whole printer either, but the pen is not a lot and could be very useful for cosplay/craft purposes. Like making custom buttons or other embellishments.
Yeah I think the pen is the better buy for sure, I kinda want it 😛 But I don’t know if I should, cause it’s just a want not a need haha. Also the filament is a pretty good price from what i’ve seen too.
GPUs switched!
PC sure runs a whole lot quieter when the dust filters aren’t completely clogged.
What did you get?
Tha’ one.
Shiny!
Look at Mr. Fancy over here!
That’s what you call it?
…*looks*
Damn you Gooky!
Clicked on your link and now my FB is full of ads for GTX970’s… it’s like they know I have an inferior GPU and want to taunt me…
So the new boss started at work this week, i’ve worked with her a total of maybe one shift. But she seems like a pretty awesome boss to work for. Really helpful with stuff, cause my previous boss never showed me how to do anything lol.
How awesome is going from a shit boss to a great one!
I’m in the opposite boat – today they announced that our awesome boss is moving to Canada… given that the boss we had before her was also awesome, I think we’re overdue for a shit one, which is unfortunate.
My previous boss wasn’t shit. Just he didn’t care about doing the things a boss is meant to do to run a store properly to company standards, which to be fair I understood since he got demoted to BWS from being a Woolworths manager so I didn’t blame him, I got along great with him & he looked after me well regarding hours & all that jazz. Also my new boss isn’t much older than me and is really good looking & has a heap of tattoos so that’s also nice 😛
Went to see Deadpool, had fun, enjoyed the movie.
But man, there’s gotta be something said for seeing it in a screening organised by the comic book shop. There were trailers for like, 4 comic book movies, and then the movie started, no other ads, plus the tickets were cheaper than normal, apparently.
Also, as a note, apparently the late hour brings out my obsession with my beloved comma. I’ll never leave you, baby.
Just got back from seeing the same. I feel like we had dissimilar experiences: shitty trailers, normal tickets, I didn’t really enjoy the film.
Can’t rag on it too much though.
Just so you know, I am doing the mental equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and going NANANANANANANA.
This movie will be good… it has to be!
It’s Deadpool. There is no way it CAN’T be good.
Mate, it’s Deadpool, there’s a near infinite number of ways it could’ve been terrible.
But so so good at the same time
I beg to differ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458525/
That was in no way Deadpool.
That was… just wrong.
I know.
I mean, imagine casting Ryan Reynolds as deadpool, what a bone head move.
The ryan part was fine. The post-ryan part was not
@chuloopa
I think you might technically be right when you say it wasn’t deadpool. If I remember rightly the words deadpool are never used, he is always referred to as Wade. Also a deadpool who can’t talk, I think somebody didn’t understand the character.
I’m sure you will enjoy it thoroughly, perhaps too much. There will be a whirlwind romance and in the space of a week the two of you will be merrily wed.
Everything will be okay.
I will let my girlfriend know to start packing her things
o_O … you’re not supposed to let her know. Trust me, you’ve got this in the bag.
,
Work has devoured my life. Send help.
I’ve taken on too much again. I need (serious) help
Dammit Scree! Every year! =P
I know, I know. Hence the I need serious help!
Just stick your fingers down work’s throat until it gags.
But money?
Money is good.
Heh. Butt money.
It’s shit pay.
I had a dream I won the laptop.. was sooo excited… then i woke up.
Now i see why people become insomniacs…. Sleeping is a cow.
Also, woke up coughing blood today.
WINNING!
But just imagine you win it! Then you can be like ‘DREAMS DO COME TRUUUUEEEE!!!!!’
If that happens i need to buy a princess dress just to saw that phrase and do a twirl
Went and saw Spotlight.
Fantastic film.
I’m fucking furious.
For a moment i thought you were telling us how you went and saw a fabric store.
Good thing it quickly haberdashed away from that, though.
I thought the same. I was going to say, I also went to spotlight last night. However, while they didn’t have as many fabric paint colours as I would have liked, I wasn’t that angry.
I’m a derp.
my favorite part is “However, while they didn’t have as many fabric paint colours as I would have liked, I wasn’t that angry”
Just had the best image of you in spot light like:
“They don’t have indigo…..”
“They. Don’t. Have. INDIGO”
“YOU MOTHER FUCKERRRRRRSSSS!!!!”
*scree rage ensues, ends with you torching their supplies*
But seriously, it was mostly reds and yellows. And at $10 a tub, not worth it. It’s good paint, but SoSoft is cheaper and has more variety.
I think there was one blue. I need two different blues.
… who is Furious?
The guy who’s with Fast all the time
So Red’s the bit on the side?
Everyone knows Red goes Fast.
And that furious sees red often? *wink*
Shuuuut uuuuuup they don’t need to know that I’m cheating on both of them
Okay, so, I’ve come to a point where I need to make a choice. I’m wondering if I should use normal fabric paint, which is matte, or else use glitter fabric paint for the inkling hats. There’s also jones tones 3d shiny paint, but it tends to stick to itself.
The fabric itself has a light sheen to it, and I’m worried about losing that. I dunno what to do!
I wouldn’t use glitter paint. Just because the people buying these would probably want it to look as close to the game as possible.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too, which is also making me lean a little towards the jones tones.
http://www.dharmatrading.com/paints/jones-tones-fabric-and-craft-paints.html
Scroll down to glossy.
Spent my 20 min train ride this morning watching a spider start to spin a web between the two seats in front of me. I was very emotionally invested! 😛 It’d stick it’s arse in the air, let out a thread that would catch the wind and try to stick it to the other seat but couldn’t quite get it. It tried like four times before it got it.
Then while walking to work a guy on his phone bumped into another dude who started yelling at him. Then a woman starts yelling at the yelling guy who then yells back at her and it was echoing throughout the tunnel and it was a whole thing. I was walking the other direction giggling at them.
Exciting morning so far 😛
I just imagine a full train but your stopping people from sitting in the seat where the spider is.
*old lady walks up*
Old Lady: “Excuse me dear, is this seat taken?”
Pow: “JEEZ! WHAT ARE YOU!? BLIND!? IT’S OBVIOUSLY TAKEN! BUZZ OFF GRANDMA!”
Sad that you can’t pat people on the head in Fire Emblem? This Otome game kickstarter has your back. Date a bunch of hot princes that inexplicably turn into animals because magic or something. One of them turns into a lion. You can pat him. You can PAT A FUCKING LION. They call it the CUDDLE SYSTEM, if you need more motivation but I know you’ve already backed it.
Yup, that sounds like anime.
My brother was trying to tell me about a bunch of girls who are guns.
“They turn into guns?”
“No, they ARE guns. Like the personification of guns.”
“So do bullets come out of them?”
“No, they carry the type of gun that they are. Only, well… no, sometimes they uh…”
“I’m having trouble with this.”
I feel like it’s time for our Friday @haggis page six on page five happy times?
(It is Friday over there in the future, right?)
Yes, yes it is
We’re 7 posts into page 5, we’ll get there.
Compiling list as we speak (type). Prepare thyself!
It’s time for the Friday Facepalm!
Inspired by this tweet, my life without internet: a hypothetical scenario.
My initial thoughts are, this would be unbearable. Sure, I lived without internet once but now it’s become part of infrastructure. Even setting side the “fear of missing out” element by not having access to a resource I currently take for granted, look at all the things I rely on the internet for.
1) Games: all my PC games are downloaded via Steam or GoG.com. Not only do I buy them all online, but they have to be downloaded. The same goes for any games I buy in the Xbox Live environment. I do buy some disc-based games, but there are usually day-one patches to contend with after the install to the hard drive takes place. I’m frankly not even sure if my Xbox works without internet. I’ve used it in short bursts when my internet has been out but functionally it seems more and more internet service is required. I think using my Xbox long term with disc-only (or already downloaded) games would be too much of a chore. I’d probably revert to my Xbox 360 and PS3, just so the experience of being net-less would be less pronounced.
2) Streaming TV/Movies: as I no longer have Foxtel and don’t get good TV reception, nearly 100% of my video-based entertainment comes from the internet. YouTube, Netflix, Stan, and even a free 3-month Presto subscription I am trying out. Without internet, and pretty decent broadband internet at that, these services no longer exist, forcing me to revert to DVD and Blu-ray. I have a pretty decent collection of both, but I’d nearly immediately start buying more, since I’d only rewatch old discs in response to a specific interest (like how my wife watches Labyrinth and Rocky Horror 2-3 times a year) rather and the purpose of entertainment in and of itself.
3) Misc. Media: I’ve purchased music and eBoooks from iTunes in order to load them onto iPod/iPads/iPhone. I could certainly revert to buying paperbacks and CDs again, and I still do sometimes. Presumably I don’t require the internet to importa CD into iTunes and put that music on my phone, but it certainly is easier with the internet than without. I think I would definitely have to go back to carrying a book with me at all times instead of reading the news or internet forums on my phone while commuting. Not unbearable, but sort of annoying.
Long term, internet has become a nearly essential utility. Not that I am an internet junkie, I don’t need to be jacked in 24/7 – but I still need to have the internet available because it is integral to other services, in the same way I don’t need to take 15 showers a day, but it would be extremely problematic if I suddenly had no hot water at 7am when I’m trying to get ready for work. Now you’d be right in pointing out that what I use the internet for is roughly 95% entertainment with maybe 5% news/fact finding/research, and that really all I’d be giving up is TV and video games. This is completely true. Devastatingly true. I’d sure read a lot more, I guess. But I’d rather watch TV and play video games.
After breaking it down, I still think it’d be unbearable, especially if it were a permanent change. Take my internet away for a month as a challenge and I’d probably find the change refreshing, as long as I was still permitted to access content I have pre-downloaded and am simply prevented from accessing more (so simulating a scenario where my internet service is temporarily disconnected rather than never having had it).
But I also think I’d be spending most of that month telling myself it’ll be over soon and counting down the days.
What’s wrong with that? All work, no play etc.
Reminds me of
smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1789#comicI couldn’t take it. Sans internet I’d be about 80% less sure of my useless facts (since I usually double check them, and you can tell if I haven’t because I put about twelve disclaimers that I’m saying something from memory), and about 300% stupider since I couldn’t just quickly wiki shit.
It would probably have other effects, but they’re unimportant compared to my desire to look smart.
Except that I have no friends, and without the internet I’d have nobody to fail at looking smart around.
There is no downside here.
In that same thread I mentioned I’d lived without (home) internet for a time. Moved into my current place in Jan 2013, got broadband in June. I had a couple gigs phone data so I could hotspot for some things, and of course internet access at work so I could do internet banking and bills and essential stuff
Main things I remember: I played all my games on PS3, so I could just pull the discs out and play. Played Dishonored for the first time in this period. Most of my old games were patched so it was fine. I did have some issues with PS+ games I’d downloaded, had to periodically sign in to PSN.
TV shows: Went back through my TV shows on DVD. Rewatched The Wire, watched Breaking Bad for the first time, borrowed series off friends. I did get a girl at work to chuck Game of Thrones on a USB for me
Books: Dead tree. Also re-read a bunch of pirated comics that I had on a drive.
Music: I had MP3s on an iPod, it was fine.
I certainly could survive without home internet then. Other than downloading games/shows, at the time the only real killer was I couldn’t youtube stuff. You pretty quickly learn to just go “hmm, too much data” and find something else, it’s not particularly hard.
My brother did housesit for a month there, and he found it hell
I think it will be the smaller incidental things that hurt the most. Tram tracker which saves me 10 minutes of stand around each morning meaning sometimes I’ll eat instead of skipping breakfast if there is enough time until the next tram.
The ability to check what the weather is doing tomorrow without having to make sure to tune into the 6:30 new broadcast.
The other major one that would be missing is just the ability to watch my nieces and nephews grow up as they are growing. Rather than the OMG look how much you have grown when you don’t see them for 6 months you can see the pics and video of what they are up to.
Yeah, it just occurred to me I’d lose internet banking. I can’t imagine having to track everything manually, wait for statements or call up for a balance when I can do it in five seconds on my phone.
Try moving to the USA. 🙁
Good lord, they don’t have internet banking apps?
Oh they do. But you can’t have it until you get your Social Security Number about 3-6 weeks after you move.
But heaven forbid that you might want to do something complicated with it, like… transfer money from your account to someone else’s account. To do that you need to write a cheque and post it to them!
(They can then deposit it electronically by taking a photo on their phone :\)
Seriously, the US banking system is Byzantine, and by that I mean to suggest it’s both complex and archaic.
Are we talking self-imposed internet exile or ‘the internet no longer exists’ doomsday or ‘you are physically barred from using the internet in any way’ government penalty stuff?
Because in the latter two situations I’d be utterly fucked as I need internet access to do my job.
I assume we’re referring to a “moving house and there’s no infrastructure”. My claims management work is all email and intranet webapps, so I can’t work without internet either.
I actually didn’t have internet for 2 months a few years ago and while initially it took some getting used to I just moved all my entertainment watching to the TV and played on my console as opposed to my PC. Didn’t really miss it all that much after you get past the initial shock (probably helps that I don’t social media =p)
That said I did have internet on my phone so that was useful.
When I moved house in 2010 I had no internet for about 2 weeks and is was frustrating. I had no data plan on my phone. We could play games but not online, our PC was basically useless.
We’ve only become more reliant on the internet since then.
I spent two months without internet when our building got sold and the old landlord’s plan expired (without getting transferred to the new owner. I think I racked up about 300 hours of EU-IV with Steam in offline mode. Was downloading youtube videos at work on a Friday to get through the weekend. 😛 If I had known when I’d be able to get it reconnected, I’d have been counting the days, for sure – as it was, it was just a matter of taking it a day at a time.
And now I sound like a junkie. :3I had a friend who moved to Tassie a while back, and didn’t get her internet hooked up for something like 3-4 weeks. I ended up sending her a care packing with a stack of TV shows and movies, ebooks, etc. that I downloaded for her, since she’s a bit of a space cadet and forgot to download anything before she left.
I’m torn on whether losing internet would be good or bad. For the most part, I tend to avoid relying on outside services and stuff, so that most of my things continue to function independently. But the thing that would kill me the most is the isolation. The vast majority of people I talk to are in places like here and Skype, if that suddenly got cut off I’d get a whole lot more stuff done since I wouldn’t be stuck at the computer for most of the day, but sooner or later some kind of depression would kick in I’d imagine.
And if it were a temporary thing like “go one month without internet” then even worse would be the attempt to catch up on all the stuff I missed in the meantime, ever since I started foruming I’ve had a terribly bad habit of trying to keep up with all the new posts since my last visit etc. Can’t go missing something that might’ve been important or informative. Bleh.
Reading a bunch of theories about the new Pokemon Magiana and potential plots for Pokemon Z and some of these are just crazy enough to be possible…
Basically, people speculate that Magiana is going to be used to introduce a new “Machine” or “Tech” type (as an opposite to the Fairy type) that’ll be introduced alongside the “other half” of the Pokedex in Pokemon Z – Dunno about this bit honestly because that seems awfully close to the Steel type we already have, but interesting to think about! There’s a few hints in XYORAS about alchemy and hidden machine kingdoms so people are running wild with theories.
Hurry up and come out, games.
Are they still doing a Pokemon Z? I’d have thought they’d just move on to an entire new generation by now.
Nothings confirmed but I’d be surprised if they didn’t.
That would have to be the worst name for a Pokemon that I’ve ever seen.
I dunno, there are some real stinkers out there 😛
(It’s the Japanese name though so it might get changed for us – maybe like Machiana or something)
It’s hard to beat something that would undoubtedly be nicknamed mangina.
Everybody seems to be reading it that way haha I bet the localisers are seeing the reaction and going “yeah… we’re changing that” 😛
“Pokeball Z”? Was going to make a joke about Pikachu going SSJ, but I think that’s essentially what mega evolutions were. 😛
Oh god… “Gather the seven legendary pokeballs to unleash a shiny Rayquaza to grant your wish…”
I can safely say I can no longer even remotely keep up with the various types of pokemon…. I’ll just stick with fire grass and water =p
So daycare centre has a book club dealio where they send home a catalogue and say do you want to by all these books. Or any of these books for normal people.
Actually pretty good, they have a ‘Every child deserves a book’ thing a couple of books in each age group are just a dollar as well as some for 2 or 3 dollars.
Also some very nice package deals for buying compete series of books and stuff
tldr I have $40 less in my bank account this morning
I remember when I was in school and once a quarter we’d get the catalogues of books we could buy. I’d circle the ones I wanted, take it home to my mother, she’d tell me to pick two or three and then if she remembered she’d give me the money to take with me before the orders closed. This all lined up correctly perhaps once a quarter, but I have fond memories of receiving my books when it did happen. I really liked the books that were puzzle books but with a story – so you could read the book from start to finish if you wanted, but part of the story was hidden in solving the puzzles correctly, one of those instances where you were committed to solving the puzzle for your own benefit – a good reinforcement of the “you’re only cheating yourself” mentality.
I wish they had more books like that for adults. You know, apart from straight up murder mysteries. Not that I don’t enjoy The Murder of Roger Akroyd, but it’s not the same. If there’s one thing I miss about being a kid, it’s how easily amused I was.
I know the ones you mean. I actually have 2 of them on my shelf in the bedroom waiting for Tiglet to get old enough to appreciate them
Yeah a few of the schools I went to had a similar setup. Got quite a few good books through that sort of program. I want to say it was through Ashton Scholastic?
Don’t remember puzzle books like that though. You don’t mean choose your own adventure style books, right?
If they are the ones I had they are a story. I have one about exploring a jungle and one about murder on a plane or something. You basically have the story that runs through the book of getting from A to B and finding the traeasure.
Each page has a puzzle kinda thing, so you might be on the boat and somebody steals something and runs away. So it will have a ‘spot the difference’ puzzle on that page and the difference is that the book next to the steering wheel was taken.
Sh we you turn the page it will continue the story and you will catch them and get the book back. If you didn’t find the difference and turn the page it will still say you chase them and got the book. Which is the cheating yourself.
The books basically continue like that, once you get the book there will open it up and there will be a cipher code that has the destination, you need to decipher that. Basically each page has a puzzle like that.
Oh and it is Scholastic that Daycare is using. The other cool thing they do is as you order books the daycare centre gets free books from them.
Yeah, that’s why the schools I went to that used it also participated – they got free books for the library.
A friend of mine in my class won a competition that Scholastic ran at one point too. He won a computer!
An Acorn computer 😛
Yeah, Ashton Scholastic, and no, not CYOA. One in particular was a story about two kids whose uncle was a diver and archaeologist/treasure hunter or something, and he was searching for a sunken city, but there were also some bad guys chasing him. The story is told from the perspective of the kids who had to solve the puzzles to find their uncle. Some were as simple as figuring out where their uncle went based on his equipment or solving a maze to descend a cliff, others involved solving a code or a rudimentary perspective-based puzzle where you have to look at photos to figure out which underwater ruin to go to. You could just read it from start to finish, but like I said, if you didn’t solve the puzzle the story wasn’t nearly as detailed or interesting. Fairly simple stuff but really fun and engaging for me as a 10 year old.
I had one CYOA book but instead of choosing which page to go to, you had to break a code to read a message, which would inform your decision. For example you might have the choice of going upstairs or downstairs, but if you solved the code you’d know there are guards upstairs so going down is the logical choice. It wasn’t that clear cut, but that’s sort of a loose example of what I mean.
I remember the old Ashton Scholastic book club catalogues! Exciting times when they arrived! Always loved getting new books as a kid! Wish I had the same enthusiasm for reading now that I’m older though.
That’s the scholastic one, isn’t it? Batboy has been reading the latest one and telling me all about the lego books and the other lego books and DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE LEGO BOOKS!?
tl;dr – he’s not getting the lego books. He can borrow them from the library for free.
Mean Mum, Mean Mum, Mean Mum 😛
I need to make sure I stop saying that before Tiglet actually picks it up
The problem with books is that they really do start to pile up. I’d rather the space be taken up by good books rather than crappy licensed stuff.
Aaron Blabey is my favourite new kids author. Pig the Pug is awesome.
The problem with books is that Tiglet likes to remove every book she owns from the bookshelf and put them on the floor. Multiple times a day. Pig the Pug is a pretty cool guy.
I personally still like Hairy Maclary series
When she’s bigger and almost reading by herself, then Neil Gaiman’s “Fortunately, the Milk!” is a very fun book – it’s like an episode of Doctor Who for little kids, except The Doctor is Professor Steg, a time-travelling stegosaurus in a hot air balloon.
That might be a good follow on as we have started reading “Where’s My Cow?” by Pratchett now
Also that doesn’t actually sound that far fetched for an episode of Dr Who
DAMN!
HELL!
FART!
I didn’t realise the rest of the message was cut off, but I like this result better.
For those who don’t have twitter or fb, I was pretyy stoked to get a message from Aussie rapper Bam Bam on fb last night, saying he thinks the song I made is great for a first production!
Talk about a confidence boost! 😀 Certainly encourages me to keep going with more stuff! Squeee!
Can I do a small community Kudos please?
I would like to nominate Welbot @welbot because despite all the crap he’s going through he is still an awesome person. Some people become bitter when they’re unwell but not him!
Also nominate numbers @lucifer9783 for always helping me with the bookmarks and putting up with my emotional crap.
Yeah.
What am I, chopped liver?!
I feel like this post could stand on it’s own.
I’m sorry
You know scree when I posted my comment I knew it would illicit your battle cry. Kind of like “Avengers Assemble!” or “It’s clobberin time” or “Hulk SMASH!” =P
=(
For a second then, I was like “Holy crap! Kudos is back?!”
I’d almost forgotten about that! Cheers for the nom all the same though! 🙂
I wonder if people are still waiting on their prizes? 😛
hahaha I’m pretty sure I’m still owed one or two 😉
I never got mine personally. I don’t mind though
I am! Every day I charge out to the letterbox, tail wagging… but every day, disappointment.
MAYBE TODAY, THOUGH!
It hasn’t come back. I just wanted a few people to know stuff.
Lunchtime roll call
I’m tossing up between some noodles or chicken cacciatore. Although I could also get some south melb market dimmies.
Hell, I can’t remember what I took for lunch, hopefully it’ll taste good.
I have leftover pizza.
LEFTOVERS! \o/
It was Massaman Curry.
And it was goooood.
Damn. Nice choice.
I made that for dinner tonight.
It was also gooooooooood
Oh man – steamed sth melb dimmies are THE SHIZ!
I’d say noodles and dimmies for the win!
Burger Foundry.
Buuuuuuurp
Schintz basic instinct wrap
Very nice. I was was tempted by schnitz today. I quite like the sweet chilli thai one as a wrap
They’re nice but so expensive. It was $27 for lunch for me and mum
We often go there when Tiglet comes to visit me at work and yeah it can get expensive quickly. Think it can come to around $40-$50 for lunch depending on what we get
I say they start doing pensioner meals =P
Our even half wraps. I can’t eat a full one anyway
Well Mrs Tigs has a mini basic instinct which is only half size and cheaper so that helps. So they do do half sized burgers at least
Not the wraps though unfortunately
Well this looks actually interesting
https://flamefrost.com/?t=8
You lost me….
I also just watched some gameplay in action.
It lost me too.
So, not free. Please insert [One Soul] to continue…
Back from 70000 Tons of Metal. I spoke to an Elf! And the singer from Visions Of Atlantis because he wore a Zelda shirt and who I found out today is in another band that does a song about Dark Souls 2. 😀
Did you see Fallujah? Of course you saw Fallujah. How were Fallujah?
Err…ummm…you know I prefer epic cheesy power metal, right? 😛
No, I didn’t see Fallujah. I did see Abinchova, Ancient Rites, Delain, Dragonforce, Eluveitie, Epica, Gamma Ray, Hammerfall, Iced Earth, Jag Panzer, Lacuna Coil, Rhapsody Of Fire, Skalmold, Stratovarius,Twilight Force, Tyr, and Visions Of Atlantis. Most of those twice, too.
Oh that’s a shame,. I think ‘The Flesh Prevails’ is one of my favourite albums of the last… forever!
But yes, cheesy power metal is also the bomb diggity =D
Oh mannn i didn’t even know that was on again.
As amazing as always?
It’s on every year!
This year was the best yet, for me. For the first time I was super busy, running from set to set with no breaks. So many epic performances!
Also apparently The Witness and Firewatch happened while I was gone? I’m definitely gonna grab Firewatch, should I also get The Witness?
When you said on twitter you were back from 70K I thought at first you’d done some insane running comp.
People seem to be pretty hype for Firewatch though are mainly reporting that it’s quite short. Since I don’t even know what the game is, I don’t know how important this is. Journey for instance is only 3 hours long but probably one of the most important gaming experiences of last gen.
Witness appears to be a source of frustration and elation in equal parts. It does seem like everyone stopped talking about it the moment they either beat it or gave up on it, though.
Hahaha, my old lady body doesn’t run! 😛
Yeah, I think I don’t have time for frustration in games anymore so I might give Witness a miss. Or make Mr. Strange play it so I can watch him and heckle him.
The Witness is very good. As long as you go in knowing it’s a puzzle game, you’ll figure it out.
FWIW, I have looked up precisely one solution (FUCKING TETROMINOES), the rest I’ve just puzzled at
Firewatch is 2 – 3 hours long. The game’s mainly walking around and talking so that’s not really an issue. Anything longer and it probably would have gotten a bit boring actually. It’s also definitely an exerperience you want to have in one sitting I think.
http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/news/latest_releases?sq_content_src=%2BdXJsPWh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGZWJpenByZC5wb2xpY2UubnN3Lmdvdi5hdSUyRm1lZGlhJTJGNTE1NTEuaHRtbCZhbGw9MQ%3D%3D
1. Can’t get away with that shit in a small town
2. Everyone will know exactly who it is by this evening, already seen one ID on facebook. Whether or not that’s correct is another question.
Also, 49!? At the very best (and, really… best?) the student will have been 18, well and truly young enough to be his daughter.
I just ate a whole pizza for lunch… I am going to regret that so badly in about an hour…
I don’t think that’s what they meant when they said “Have you backed up regularly”. 😛
What’s that? You Haven’t played @kramsdesign’s Anna’s Quest? Why, it’s 50% off right now!
https://www.gog.com/game/annas_quest
Glad we had this chat.
FailReply
So, gravitational waves. So hard to detect that they requires a hyper-violent galactic event, such as the collision of two intermediate mass black holes or your mum getting out of bed.
#Page6StartsNow
NO WE’RE SO CLOSE LIKE 6 MORE POSTS
#organicpagesix #betterforyou
#nutrition
Git your damn hashtags off my lawn! *shakes fist*
GET A FUCKING TWITTER ACCOUNT GRANDPA
*kickflips skateboard, rides off while Xtreme guitar plays*
That’s the power of love!
You could play the music yourself.
https://www.facebook.com/DisdainForPlebs/videos/984481108299003/?pnref=story
Last night, decided to play around with some stuff I hadn’t tried in a while and eventually got Opentrack working using a Hydra controller for input, and had Elite picking it up for head tracking. At first I was just trying to use it for positional tracking to see if I could use it in conjunction with my Rift (sadly no such luck, the head-tracking stuff seems to switch off once you activate HMD mode :(), but eventually I decided to switch on rotational tracking just to see what it was like. I always thought that the whole TrackIR type thing was kinda weird, in that you looked around the game world by looking away from the screen. But no, it’s actually pretty great. And then I tried turning on the anaglyphic 3D mode and even though the only glasses I had on-hand are red and blue rather than red and green so it didn’t quite work properly, holy crap it is amazing. Especially going down to planet surfaces. Canyon runs feel so much faster, and there’s so much better sense of depth that it’s much much easier to skim the surface without worrying about hitting it. I mean yeah it’ll be way better in the Rift, but this works pretty damn well too. Save for the weird colouring of everything.
Had another go of flying and driving around with DK1 afterwards, and while the colours were better that low resolution makes it not quite so great 😛 Also should probably bump down the settings to increase frame rate, but eh. Fun.
I understood none of that. You flew somewhere with some magic glasses?
Yes!
Are we there yet?
… obviously not.
Nope! Allow me to kick it off! #page6onPage5
hi @Strange!
At school I wanted to join the debating team, but someone talked me out of it.I like to go to book stores and say “I’m looking for a book called ‘How to handle rejection without killing’. Do you have it?”I… can no longer wait!
We use to have a teacher called Miss Turtle at school, strange looking woman, but she tortoise well.
I had a dream last night that i was driving round a roundabout with one hand and flipping pancakes with the other. I was tossing and turning all night.
Why did the blonde stare at the Ford?
It said Focus.My wife disliked my obsession with Japanese food, sushi left me.
If someone asks you to spell “part” backwards. Don’t! It’s a trap!!!
If you put a picture of yourself in a locket, you could say that you are independant.
I doubt Vodka is the answer, but it’s worth a shot.
A man approaches the cashier at his local supermarket with trolley full of groceries and a banana in his ear.
The cashier says to the man,
“Excuse me sir, do you realise that you have a banana in your ear?”
The man removes the banana from his ear and replies,
“Sorry, what was that? I couldn’t hear you. I had a banana in my ear”.
A man walks into a bar with a giraffe. He walks up to the bar and takes a seat, the giraffe does the same. The man orders a beer for himself and a double scotch for the giraffe. They both proceed to drink and after a while they order the same again. They continue all night, ordering the same drinks, drinking them and ordering another shout untill suddenly the giraffe falls off his stool and lies unconscious on the floor. The man gets up of his stool and heads for the door, The barman shouts at him as he heads out the door ‘You can’t leave that lyin’ ‘ere!’ to which the man replies, ‘Its not a lion its a giraffe!
Paddy finds a sandwich with two wires stickin out of it. He phones the police and says “Bejesas I’ve just found a sandwich dat looks like a bomb”. The operator asks “is it tickin?” Paddy says “No I tink it’s beef!”
Bill and his wife Blanche go to the state fair every year,
And every year Bill would say,
” Blanche, I’d like to ride in that helicopter ”
Blanche always replied,
” I know Bill, but that helicopter ride is fifty bucks,
And fifty bucks is fifty bucks! ”
One year Bill and Blanche went to the fair, and Bill said,
” Blanche, I’m 75 years old.
If I don’t ride that helicopter, I might never get another chance ”
To this, Blanche replied,
” Bill that helicopter ride is fifty bucks, and fifty bucks is fifty bucks ”
The pilot overheard the couple and said,
” Folks I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take the both of you for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and don’t say a word I won’t charge you a penny!
But if you say one word it’s fifty dollars. ”
Bill and Blanche agreed and up they went.
The pilot did all kinds of fancy maneuvers, but not a word was heard.
He did his daredevil tricks over and over again,
But still not a word…
When they landed, the pilot turned to Bill and said,
” By golly, I did everything I could to get you to yell out, but you didn’t.
I’m impressed! ”
Bill replied,
” Well, to tell you the truth
I almost said something when Blanche fell out,
But you know, Fifty bucks is fifty bucks! “
The two littlest chilli sprouts have fallen over, one of the big two has lost all but its first two leaves and the other has lost one of its big leaves. Game over? Seems like game over 🙁
Anyone interested in a discount Steam copy of Rise of the Tomb Raider? 😛
Yes, please.
Hm. Didn’t think this far ahead. How much is it going for? Steam has it for US$60, so does that mean it costs AU$85 normally?
Still interested? I’ve had you and another friend both raise their hands, but no movement beyond that point 😛
Also I’m not sure how the redemption works, whether the deadline of the 16th refers to gaining the code I have now or if it’s something I need to use to get the Steam key before the 16th or what. Whole thing’s been clear as mud.
I’ll leave it, thanks.
SYDNEY! I AM IN YOU.
@mrtaco @os42 hi! *waves*
hi! *waves*
😀 And you. I could have tagged all of Sydney, I suppose… Like THIS (except Gooky ‘coz I tagged him already…):
@35 @alexpants @anonymous_pessimist @batgirl @batguy @cakesmith @cffndncr @cj @cookingmama @dkzeitgeist @doc_what @effluvium-boy @fatshadylive @gingerchris86 @gorzilla @harli @hugo_the_hungarian_barbarian @mawt @morkai @markserrels @novacascade @powalen @pupp3tmast3r @ruffleberg @shiggyninty
*from deep within the bunker I’m spending my weekend in* Hello! I can recommend bars and that’s about it.
More precisely, I’m sitting in our office on Pitt Street doing some prep for a job at 6am, then I’m going to go hunt some food and sit in a pub by myself for a while I suppose…
Oh where on Pitt Street are you? I am also stuck in the office on Pitt Street… unfortunately it has reached the point where I actually live here now, and life beyond the office has faded to the faintest of memories.
But yeah, I’m going to be at work for most of the night. #livingthedream
Near Hunter Street. Well, if you need to dive out for some food and want some company for a bit, let me know, I’m happy to wander about. 🙂 #PittStPitStop
Staying in the Westin which apparently is REALLY CLOSE to work. 😀
Oh nice, we’ve hosted conferences there before, nice spot! You’re above GPO which is alrite for a drink, little bit expensive. Angel Place is nearby as well, which is a pretty dingy pub, also men’s gallery if you’re into that sort of thing. Pretty sure there’s a Chinese New Year-themed bar in Martin Place which also may be worth checking out.
I usually go to the Grand for an ale or if I’m feeling like a walk, up to Harts or even the Lord Nelson. Won’t eat at the Grand anymore though after I heard a story about steak and maggots from a colleague. 😮
Oh god.. that’s um… yeah, sometimes I don’t mind being a vegetarian so much.
Have you been to Spawn Point on Clarence St?
I have not. I’ll be up for longer in a couple of weeks without the 5:30am wake up call so I’ll investigate next time!
@trikeabout it’s well worth it, they have an occulus rift and big screen smash. Also guitar hero and arcade cabinets… it’s enough to give me a nerd-boner every time I walk past it.
@trikeabout The Lobo Plantation just a couple of doors South of them is pretty great. I mean I don’t really know how it compares against other bars in terms of price/menu/whatever, but at the very least it’s just a really cool place 😛
I just found a 3DS charging cable plugged into the PC in the workshop here. I’m guessing it’s mine from the last time I was in the Sydney office…
Hi @redartifice!
Hi Strange! Did you hear Matt Leblanc is going to be a new host on top gear? I dont think he will be any good though, it will be like hes always stuck in secooooond geeeeeeear
Hey, you take that back! Matt’s been there for you
The new top gear team looks way too big and also like it was designed in a board room.
Also continuing the trend of hiring the biggest prats in the UK by putting Chris Evans in there.
5 blokes, one woman, one Stig. Sigh. Ok, admittedly Sabine is about as awesome as the rest combined, but even so.
Honestly if it was just Sabine, Leblanc and any of the non-Chris Evans other guys I’d be more interested. Three presenters is a nice dynamic I think. More than that just feels cluttered and makes it seem like pre-Clarkson Top Gear or something equally boring like Fifth Gear.
Eugh. Just counted out the hours I have worked over the last 3 days… 43.
Please send help.
If it makes you feel better, I sort of wanted to work, but there’s nothing for me to do, so I’ve been unpaid for the last few days.
The last few days that I spent sitting around playing XCOM 2.
Okay, you probably don’t feel any better now, do you?
Well that’s something. Photographer for Australian music mag ‘Hysteria’ reckons one of my Instagram pics of one of our many frogs that was chilling out next to the cats water bowl is a ‘great snap’ I feel honoured by such comment! 😛
Hmm, these Balmain Pale Ale beers were reduced to clear at work yesterday 4 for $7 so I thought why not, turns out they ain’t too bad. Also the Gage Roads Single Fin Summer Ale is a nice refreshing drop, picked up a 6 pack of those for $12 at Dan Murphy’s the other day. Gotta do my market research for decent recommendations at work 😛
Are you just advertising the weekly specials? 😉
Hahaha. Our specials mostly include domestic shit I can;t stand, nothing I like is ever on special, like Somsersby Double Press or Mercury Hard Cider =(
Plus I don’t work for Dans anymore 😛
I don’t know if this is for real, but this guy has a ton of computer equipment listed, all with the description of…
Hilarious if true.
http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/dette_70/m.html?item=262282815288&hash=item3d11462738
Asking brand new prices for most of it as well, yeah no. I should make an offer of like 1/3 of the listed price for that 980 though 😛
Lolwut, $800 for that X99 motherboard, it’s like as cheap as $600 elsewhere.
Edit: Also look at the hand in the picture of that 980 they’re a very young persons hand, so that’s BS saying what they are saying. Plus if they wanted their money back they could’ve returned them.
I’ve made a huge mistake.. I bought Ice Break ‘stripped’ ice coffee this morning & it tastes fucking awful, 30% less sugar oh god why did I do this to myself D=
Yeah those are never good. I think a couple of times we’ve ended up with the Dare “raw” ones… actually now that I think about it I can’t remember if that was the ok one, or it was another one instead that I can’t think of the name of.
Either way, “diet” anything sucks 😛
See, I like both the Dare RAW and the Ice Break Stripped. The normal stuff is way too sweet. I’m less happy with Dare since they changed the recipe of RAW (went from “no sugar” to “30% less sugar”, upped the kilojoule count by 60kJ per 100ml, to make the taste worse (though I’m clearly not someone who calorie counts)). Basically the only other option after that is Farmer’s Union, which I’d like a lot more if it had about double its current coffee content.
Yeah, it woke me up sort of at least so that was okay. I still prefer the double shot regular one. Someone does a triple shot, that’s nice lets me see colours after a 750ml one 😀
Ah, so glad to have today off. Wasn’t liking the idea of a 9th day in a row of work. Though if I did tomorrow’s shift would’ve been double time & a half sooo that would’ve been okay, since it’s already time & a half for me on Sundays..
So I ended up getting back into Kantai Collection. I thought I’d quit but there’s an event on and it sucked me right back. Can’t escape its gravitational pull.
Very small event this time and I had time to do some prep – though not quite as perfectly prepared as I hoped. Only 3 maps and I’ve cleared the first two.
The big draw going in were the addition of a new Akizuki-class Destroyer and a new Foreign Ship. Just prior to the event starting a 16 inch Mark 7 gun was added to the game – this is the gun of the US Iowa-class battleship so the assumption was that they’d decided to introduce US ships which was a pretty big deal.
Turns out the Iowa or whatever it is (Iowa class was about six ships IIRC) was added for the Vita version of the game, and the browser version won’t get her for a while yet. The new foreign ship for the event is Italian heavy cruiser Zara and stat-wise she’s about what you’d expect from a mid-1920s cruiser. Which is to say that compared to the IJN cruisers and Prinz Eugen she’s utter shit. Kind of cute though.
Decided to tackle the first map on hard difficulty because the reward was one of the Iowa guns, and I wanted to use it in place of the standard 41cm gun on Fusou/Yamashiro/Nagato/Mutsu. Had quite a bit of trouble with the boss for the final kill but nailed her eventually after a slight strategy change. No new ships while I was clearing, which is a shame because seaplane tender Mizuho drops in that map. I’ll be going back for her once I’ve done the event.
Basically steamrolled the second map on Medium difficulty. Hard mode reward wasn’t worth the extra effort and nothing special dropped on hard, so why bother? Got DD Asashimo on the final run, and clearing also got Hatsuzuki, who it turns out I really don’t like the artwork for.
Will be attempting E3 over the weekend. Going easy difficulty as the only drops available I care about are Graf Zeppelin (spent 50+ attempts last event trying to get her, dammit), Asagumo and the new DD Okinami, and all are easy-mode drops. Assuming I can get Okinami and Graf there once I clear the map, I’ll head back to E1 and try and pick up Mizuho and Umikaze who also drops there.
Getting ever so close to a full Kancolledex. Asagumo, Teruzuki, Okinami, Mizuho, Graf Zeppelin, Arashi, Hagikaze, Sakawa and Roma are my only gaps now I think.
Once the event’s over I’ll go back to leveling up stuff. Abukuma is my focus for that first, even though I can’t stand her, as she has fantastic utility. Akatsuki and Ashigara after that.
Oh awesome Better Call Saul returns next week, woo!
I started playing GAMES again and it feels weird!
Fun though 😀
Xenublade?
Untouched for months!
I haven’t even started it \o/
I tried playing tomb raider GO yesterday, that’s the first game I’ve played in 2 weeks
Woo games! Mine was Crypt of the Necrodancer. Tried playing Ori but Crypt was more enticing!
Ori is the best. Go back to it, you sunnofabitch.
Street Fighter V is now pre-loadable…
Wish I could get that! Pretty keen to give that game a go!
First time snorkeling for the year, kind of regret having my hair shaved short: so much sunscreen.
Yeah, but it stays out of your face in the water.
ASTONISHING NEWS:
My Sydney install is done. Early. 😮
So I’m going to go and hang out at the airport before heading home for 90 mins of jumping up and down and yelling at 22 men chasing a bag of air around a field.
They’re back to playing AFL already? It’s only mid Feb.
Was anyone else completely blindsided by the massive dying light patch? I was freaking out when I couldn’t even play the base game let alone the following, and then my download percentages got all the way to 118%! It was like the zombies had infected my drive.
And then today while playing the following, my brother and I encountered a bug, which could only be fixed once we’d killed ourselves. We encountered nothing like this in the base game, who knows why they rewrote and replaced all that code anyway?
In other news I got 100% on rise of the tomb raider, the game is flawed but it’s beautiful and pretty good adventuring. I wish it would return more to its roots in terms of story though, I liked the isolation and solitude of the original far better.
Why must people be so god damn shitty to one another. Like today this kid I served at work, seemed like a good kid at the time complied to showing ID and all that. Fast forward to the end of my shift copper walks in with centre security & the kid in tow, turns out this kid (who was 18) had stolen someone’s debit card & pay passed himself a nice little shopping spree which included a couple of bottles of Bundaberg Rum & a carton of Jack Daniel’s & Cola. And people wonder why I don’t like pay pass on my debit card, one reason is because of assholes like this.
To be fair, Paypass only accounts for the tiniest percentage of card fraud (I can’t remember what it’s up to now, but in 2014 it was less than 2%) – you’re way more likely to have your card details nicked and then thousands of dollars charged to your account before they block the card (for me, it was over 3 grand worth of Chinese itunes vouchers).
Either way, the cardholder is going to have his/her money refunded by the bank, so it’s more an inconvenience than anything