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329 responses to “Talk Amongst Yourselves”
Today has already started so badly. I think it’s going to be the worst day for me in months.
edit – oh man, what a great start to TAY!
Hope things have improved for you
Slow TAY day.
I’m at work on a public holiday, and it’s about a million percent humidity. Even the air in my office feels wet. I can’t paint my arcade stick until it dries out…
Civil War was pretty awesome though. There’s a little bit of movie logic going on, but everyone kicked loads of ass.
Jumping in on the boat that @f4ction is on. Absolute shit start to today. After having fixed my motorbike from my previous crash that happened roughly 2 weeks ago, I have now sustained another on the way to work with even more damage.
I only just got the bike back on the road yesterday. Quite a bit of rain accompanied with stupid high-ridged road marking does not make for a happy Rogue. Repairs are gonna be around $2,200 and insurance excess is $1,250 atm. Fun times.
Ouch. Those markings can be a hazard.
You ok though?
Yeah I’m all good minus the ego/confidence hit 🙂 . Bit tender in the neck and a big graze on the lower back. Thanks to the doc, I’ve got some good ol’ painkillers to help me out. Thanks mate!
Working on a Public Holiday too….. made slightly less awful by the fact I had Friday off.
One plus side is the walk into work is reminiscent of a desolate Zombie Apocalypse
Who are these people who have a public holiday?
the weird ‘Public’ people
Queenslanders. Labour Day is first Monday in May.
QUEENSLANDAH
But.
QUEEEEEEENSLANDAAAAAAH
Monday morning post-hockey pain – that’ll teach me for showing up early to watch our higher grade’s game. “Yeah, just sit on the bench Spadge” turned into playing 2/3 of the higher grade’s game, plus playing the entirety of my normal team’s game without substitution. Damn dirty team in my normal grade as well, which certainly isn’t helping general soreness.
Exercise is silly.
Forgot Opal card, had to go back home for it, missed my usual train. The next train was filled halfway to the city by a year 7 class on a school excursion. TBH they were actually pretty well behaved. Just really loud. And their teacher kept telling them to move out of seats for adults who were too embarrassed to accept them.
Oh well.
The next Games with gold games went free yesterday: Defence Grid 2, and Grid 2.
Grid 2 sucks. One of those shitty racers with floaty controls and cars that spin out so they threw in a gimmicky rewind function. It might work better with a steering wheel but trying to play it with a controller was a short-lived exercise in frustration.
Defence Grid 2 is alright. A fun tower defense game with pretty nice graphics and an interesting story I mostly ignored. Got some ok ideas going for it. I will play more of this.
Also played a little more Valiant Hearts. Just a really tremendous little game. Does a wonderful job telling a story and blending it with history with characters that are relatable despite having no dialogue and limited narration.
The original defense grid is the best pure tower defense game I have ever played. Still haven’t gotten around to DG2.
I love the angry little French or German guys jumping up and down in Valiant hearts
If you’re an Xbox One owner with a gold sub, DG2 is free this month. Or it’s $15 on steam or something. I don’t know. Anyway, I assume DG2 is an improvement on the original. It seems to have a steep learning curve but usually halfway through a mission I figure out what I did wrong and can go back and smash it on my second try.
I’m pretty sure I actually backed their original launch on kickstarter. So it was relegated to the I don’t play early access games bucket and haven’t looked since it was officially released
I am always in two minds about people insisting that children stand on public transport. The handholds are all designed for adults, the kids are much safer sitting in the seats if there’s a sudden stop, especially if they’re younger than, say, about 14.
Yeah, that’s always awkward to see if I ever get on a bus too close to peak-hour. Some of them really struggle and look a bit nervous about what they should be doing. (Although that’s probably just part and parcel of being a school kid.)
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve served as a (hopefully) soft landing pad for flying commuters who didn’t have a good grip.
yeah it is difficult but if you cram the whole class of them into the back train then they hold each other in place.
Not sure about up there but in melbourne it is actually a ‘rule’ that student concession holders must vacate a seat for a full paying passenger. I say ‘rule’ as I don’t think it has ever been enforced.
Pretty sure it’s the rule up here, too. There’s signs and stuff.
I am experiencing internet issues. Windows keeps saying that it’s missing one or more network protocols.
Resetting my router seems to fix it, but I’m having to reset every hour. I think I need to check things.
My day has been pretty good so far, and it’s still Sunday here.
Just thought I would mention that and be a jerk.
HI TAY.
despite freaking out about it for a week, I managed to go to the dentist on friday. WHEEE!!! she fixed my cracked tooth! but now i’ve gotta go back a few more times so she can fix other shit. HAHAHAhahahaOHGODHELPME.
anyway, spent a bit of time at my parent’s place this weekend. gave the puppy & kitty some cuddles. that was cool. also, my dog understands how lights work. like, she’s old. her eyesight is going. She cant see in the dark well enough any more to go down the steps to the back yard at night. so she just waits near the back door, and barks. just once. someone will go over & flick the lights on the steps on & then she’s happy & goes straight outside.
I dunno, why but i find that super impressive. My dog has a concept of turning lights on and off. either that, or she thinks her humans have the ability to turn the sun.
was thinkng aobut finishing Dark Souls 3 yesterday. only got 3 bosses left to go. but I think you’ve gotta be in the right headspace to play DS, which i wasnt, so I finally spent some time with Starcraft 2.
so far, i’m really liking it. maining Zerg coz fuck micro-management.
basically played the tutorial, and the game wanted me to play 3x 1vAI games. I did that. it told me i sucked & put the default difficulty to normal. so thats something.
wanted to try out 2vAI, thinking it’d be me + an AI vs 2 AI, so I clicked it. unexpectedly, that was not right. HOLY SHIT IS THAT A REAL PERSON?! OH GOD. I SUCK TOO MUCH TO INTERACT WITH HUMANS.
Anyway. fun game. been on a bit of an RTS binge recently. Grey Goo is exceedingly fun. Made by the remnants of Westwood Studios, so it’s got a bit of a C&C vibe to it (totally not a bad thing). I’ll be playing that a lot more until I can convince a few friends to get SC2.
That might have to wait though. Uni stuff has a tendency to intrude on fun stuff.
anyway, hows things with you lot?
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/1021920/1/DistantDrop/
I’m a masters player back in wol/hots saying zerg is less micro management that other races couldn’t be more than wrong.
everything i’ve been told so far about zerg is that economy & expansion are the most important part of their strategy. then its all about swamping opposition with greater numbers.
but i’m a total noob & i know there’d be a bit more to it than that. but that’s an issue for another time.
Well your still have to scout, harass if at all possible, and pick advantageous or at the very minimum~ workable army trades, you can out macro players to death but at the higher levels it won’t work when their just as good at it.
Or lose to some cheeser doing the same perfected strategy over and over..
You should rig up a switch for your dog to turn the lights on, see if she’s clever enough to figure it out. Especially impressive if turning them off again once she’s done 😛
Ugh…
Got my hands on an Xbox 360 on Friday, and I bought Diablo 3, as well as Disney Infinity on the Wii U.
I’m enjoying Diablo a fair bit more than I expected, honestly, mostly because the controls have transitioned well to a controller.
…What happened to Friday? Why can’t I remember Friday?
Went out to the city on Sat- OH RIGHT. Beard trim on Friday, and the forever wait. And narrowly avoiding heading into all that trouble at Bankstown 😛
Felt like a betrayal going to a hairdresser other than my friend who I used to see. But her number “is currently not accepting incoming calls”, so it’s not my fault 😛 I swear I had an e-mail address on a card somewhere, but the only card I could find only had numbers on it. Hmm.
So yeah, ended up out on Saturday night, farewell drinks for my sister’s boyfriend’s sister and her boyfriend before they head off to Africa this week. Climbing’s gonna be so quiet without them around for the next eight months. And who will I have to advise me against falling for Aerialist’s “friend collector” traps? 😛 Speaking of which, they asked me about how things were going with that. Like, all they got out was “so how’s the friend collector?”, and not particularly loud or anything. And instantly from over at the other table my sister pipes up saying “ooh, what’s this?” Htf did she even catch that. Ugh. Mostly got away with minimal info dispensed, I think. Sort of. Still more than I’d have liked. Also, Opera Bar has far too little to choose from to drink.
Spent Sunday with the house to myself, so tried to tidy things up a bit. Cleared out the huge pile of dust on the extra seat at my computer desk, moved out the old ThinkPad since that hasn’t been used in years and hooked up the new PC to the new monitor. But decided to set that up fresh again since I kinda screwed up the last one a bit, and that took forever, so didn’t get to actually take it for a test run at all. Maybe later. Still got nfi when/if my damn Rift is ever going to show up, things look set for this week for regular AU preorders but there’s no word on KS units other than people saying “they’re in another allocation”. Whatever that means. Wish I’d just bought one, ugh.
So the weekend was a weekend
Friday had work drinks and not much else. Didn’t have to work this Saturday so made the most of the weather. Went for a couple of walks, played at the park and went to the cafe.
Sunday was wet and cold but went to the supermarket. Ended up cancelling the playdate for Tiglet due to the weather and the fact she hadn’t slept.
Gaming wise we finally finished Alice: Madness begins. Damn that games goes from spooky to creepifying in that last level. Really good game, enjoyed it a lot. Alice spoilers
Interesting to see a game handle such emotive and powerful topics. I think it did it quite well. Can’t think of many other games that look at murder, prostitution and the control that the upper class hold over the lower.I also bought some games for Tiglet and we started playing one of those. She really, really liked it, it has a camera in it. The game is Teddy floppy-ear – Mountain adventure which is a sweet little point and click. She has a giggle every time teddy takes a photo, so sweet.
Also played a little bit more fallout 4
Never played Madness Begins but after reading this i’m curious. Have you played Alice: Madness Returns?
Dammit, that was the one I finished I just typed in the wrong word.
I guess madness begins would be American Mcgee’s alice which I played but didn’t finish.
Have you played Madness returns, if not that is the one you are now curious about.
Oh right. Yup I’ve played through madness returns and thought it was great. Such a good looking game and I dug the creepy twist on everything. My only criticism was that I felt that the levels sometimes dragged on. I would play for an hour and wouldn’t feel any sense of progression.
I recently started replaying it on PC, recording the game play. I wanted to make my own trailer that really shows off how beautiful yet dark it can be. Just a little fun project to keep myself busy. But since moving back overseas its been put on the back burner big time..
I’m pretty sure I read last year that American Mcgee was launching a kickstarter for it to be adapted to a graphic novel.
My weekend? Lemme tell you about my weekend. I bet you’re curious about my weekend, and rightly so! It was quite the weekend. I know that some of you might be thinking that before, I wouldn’t particularly laud my weekends- no, my entire week- with gusto. And I want to address that today. Because no longer will I dance around the question about my weekend! You and I will work together to make weekends great again!
Oh and somebody from my apartment building’s gym right below my suite was blasting queen at full volume while working out, so naturally I waited until bohemian rhapsody. And then the “Thunderbolt and Lightning, very very frightening me” part. And then proceeded to sing at the top of my lungs (and by that I mean screaming at the top of my lungs) “GALILEO!”
That was nice.
You are right, you did make the weekend great again
I managed to finish the Nioh demo and it’s a clear indication of what bugs me the most about the response to Dark Souls. The playerbase and the advertisement always referred to the franchise as balls bustingly hard. That you will die, over and over again, losing thousands and thousands of souls each time. That each victory is nothing but luck and you’ll most likely never reach the half way point before quitting. Posting gifs and gifs of someone eating it hard with the tagline, ‘Welcome to Dark Souls!’. Apparently all conversations of the franchise is talks about how badly you died, instead of talks about the environment or lore.
Nioh seems to be basing its entire system on this attitude because it’s designed to kill you. A single enemy can get lucky and kill you in one-hit. Fighting more than one enemy, regardless of how strong you are, usually results in death. It’s designed to be unfair because, ‘It’s what people love about Dark Souls!’.
I reject that notion. Dark Souls was never about difficulty, it was about the unknown. You didn’t die to a boss because he had a one hit kill attack, you died because you weren’t aware of how to defeat him. You had to manage your resources, study enemies, switch out weapons.
Nioh is just about killing you. There’s no real rhyme or reason, I still don’t know how I defeated the bosses. The second boss I accidentally killed because I used my Devil Trigger mode, which stunned him, and then when my DT ended I found out it was full again. So I just spammed it. But previously it never filled up, so what the hell?
Yeah, Dark Souls is not hard due to a huge difference in power between you and the enemies, it’s hard because there is not such a difference. It relatively levels the playing field and refuses to hand-hold compared to typical action games and expects you to deal with it.
You don’t get killed by a random hollow because it’s super strong or attacked you by the dozen*. It kills you because it has a sword and you are made of meat and you didn’t respect that.
You either pay attention and learn the world and mechanics or you die. And won’t let you just powerlevel and button mash instead. (mostly)
*Unless this is DS2, which we don’t talk about.
Yeah, even the Dark Souls devs didn’t understand that Dark Souls isn’t just about being frustratingly difficult. Look at Dark Souls II.
A little late but figured new tay is a better place to say Happy belated birthday @coldcamv
Also happy birthday @gingerchris86
Thanks Tigs! hows everything going with Tiglet?
Really well. One day a week of daycare is working out well. We have sorted out the walking thing and she is off and running. Do a bit of therapy to help kick start her speech but otherwise all super good.
We made her a cute ABC book of photos of her to help with that which she loves.
Happy birthday @coldcamv and @gingerchris86!
Trying to decide between Overwatch and Battleborn…
What are your opinion(s) on both of them???
I NEED TO MAKE A DECISION SOON!!!
Well in one you shoot dudes in the face, whereas in the other you will shoot dudes in the face.
That’s the extent of my knowledge on the topic.
OBJECTION!
Technically in one of them you shoot dudes in the face and in the other you shoot dudes in the face. See the difference?
Oh, so youre saying in Overwatch you shoot dudes in the face, and in Battleborn you shoot dudes in the face?
Got it.
Ive only seen video footage of both from youtubers so take this with a grain of salt the size of your head..overwatch looks more akin to TF2 while Battleborn looks more like Borderlands..I think that overwatch will have more longevity than battleborn but it all comes down to personal preference
Yep, this.
I’ve played both and they literally feel like extensions of TF2 and Borderlands. Both were pretty solid but at the moment I’m fair more interested in the play style Overwatch provides.
I haven’t seen any Battleborn footage, I’m personally not a massive fan of Borderlands so Overwatch has me interested!
I had no desire to buy it, until I saw some Gameplay about a fortnight ago with the ‘Killing Room’ that was on Kotaku a little while ago: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRBdWhdNPxtYFK84z-Sd6BQ
Not the actual trolling that made me excited, but you can see the different playstyles which has piqued my interest!
Overwatch is getting the most hype so likely to stick around longer.
Battleborn seems to be more MOBA like, so depends on if you want something like that or a standard arena based shooter
Morning TAY! (Jesus, I started writing this at 7.30am but work has absolutely slammed me today) so… Good evening TAY!
Pretty cool weekend, I started marking some University papers which was quite enjoyable (in a ironing your shirts kind of way).
I also watched 6 or 7 Stellaris Paradox Extra videos which has helped me reach peak hype for the game 😀 I’m not sure what I’m more hype for, Stellaris or No Man’s Sky? :S
What is the new game release ya’ll are most looking forward too?
I have a 3 way split between mirrors edge catalyst, stellaris, and uncharted 4.
Vale, may budget.
Vale.
STAR FO-
Oh, right. Um.
Oh yeah, The Climb!
It’s ok, I give you permission to by hyped for both games. Continue.
Has he got a permit for that. This must be monitored closely, we don’t want hype levels to exceed the safety threshold.
I broke out the screwdriver on Sunday and had a poke around inside my T.16000Ms, to see how viable it’d be to add extra buttons to the stick. I’ve seen someone else do it, not entirely sure how easy it’d be. But while I was there I decided to remove all the annoyingly bright LEDs from their mounts so the damn base will stop blinding me whenever I nudge the stick. Much better.
Does this mean you’ll be back in SPAAAAAAACE?
Hopefully maybe. Although I believe beta is about to drop soon? Haven’t been following so closely, but that’s always fun to tool around in.
Yeah, Engineers is dropping in the next week or two. The new stuff looks like a lot of fun. I don’t think there are any new ships, but the new surface bases look rad.
OH! DIDN’T THEY SAY THERE WOULD BE NEW ENGINES FOR CLASS-1 SLOTS? RACING GRADE ENGINES.
I am so jamming one of those into my Sidewinder, it’ll be great if it can make it viable for Anaconda hunting again.
I read that torpedoes have been buffed – a single rear end hit on a shields down ‘conda did enough damage to the drives to make them malfunction and destroyed 3 of the point defences…
http://i.bittwiddlers.org/LXc.gif
I have these weird lumps on my neck, and I have no idea what they are or how they got there…
Don’t rule out vampire bites. Be careful around sunlight for the next few days.
…Alternately, see a GP/go to one of those bulk-billing mole-check clinics.
That’s your head mate…
Lumps. Plural.
Oh, its your headS, sorry…
It’s Spaghett’s last song played game time!
Rings by Aesop Rock
Man ate a damn dictionary and regurgitates it in rhymes.
How are we all?
Le Castle Vania – Shots Fired (from the John Wick soundtrack).
Doin’ alright. Started getting into listening to the Hilltop Hoods discography over the weekend. Liked more of it than not, which was a surprise.
Normally when I hear a track that I really like from an artist I haven’t heard much of, I’ll go look up the album it’s from and discover – to my dismay – that the song I liked was a massive departure from their normal style and is one of the only tracks I actually like on the entire album.
John Mayer – Something Like Olivia
Phantom of the Opera – Nightwish. Nothing like a classic dark opera given a slightly heavier tone with a vocalist who can do it justice. When I first heard Tarja sing I was a little put off – only really liked their post-Tarja stuff – but with the right material… *melts*
High pitched hum of a dying PC drive – The one next to me
It’s kinda an artistic performance piece, you probably don’t understand
So, computer problem solved courtesy of @welbot !
Also, I feel like I am finally getting somewhere with Techie’s cosplay. And thanks to @sernobulus I am also considering doing a callie cosplay.
I think I must hate myself.
Don’t hate yourself. It is clearly all Nob’s fault
Yes, let’s all hate Nob.
I concur
Can we love him at the same time?
That guy is a dick!
Ha!
Hey let me know if you got my e-mail and if it works!
Just happy I could help 🙂 Hopefully it will continue to behave itself!
Back at work after just over a week on annual leave. Booo.
But also means I’m back on TAY. Yay?
booo-yays
I was saying boo-urns.
But you are back on TAY, that means something right? Right?!
\o/
/o\
\o/
/o\
\o/ ^o^ o( /o\
Last night’s episode was a bit slow so hopefully I can jazz up this week’s recap with my stellar vocabulary and ability to do words good.
Game of Thrones season 6 episode 2: “Night of the Living Recap”
Melisandre, Lord Commander Sam Tarly, and Jon Snow play a game of Cards Against Westeros. Melisandre quits when Jon repeatedly plays the “a sad handjob” card every hand, in flagrant ignorance of the established rules and an honestly quite offensive assumption that she has nothing better to do with her time.
With a lifetime of weapons training Jamie and Bronn have little trouble with the Imperial Army’s training regime but are caught off guard when it turns into a choreographed musical number. Thankfully most of their mistakes are removed in the editing process. Everyone feels reinvigorated by the process and not even the news that the White Walkers have razed several villages can dampen their mood.
Sansa leaves her humourless tree husband, who pleadingly calls out to her not to go as he can’t chase her. The subtitles suggest he’s being sarcastic but honestly there’s no way to tell. Sansa takes his desperation at face value and pats herself on the back for being a strong independent woman who don’t need no tree. While she’s busy doing that, someone punches her in the face from off screen and she blacks out.
Following having his manhood being threatened with a blade, Podrick has developed anxiety and completely ceased all masturbation. Brienne falls into a deep depression as pretending not to listen to him going at it in the darkness each night was the closest thing she had to entertainment.
Balon Greyjoy, Lord of the Iron Isles, delivers three seasons worth of exposition about how poorly the family business has been doing while no one cared, and wonders where his son Theon is for the first time in ever. Tired of living on a rock surrounded by water where it literally always rains, he decides to take a trip someplace warm. Most of the scene is consumed by a conversation with a travel agent who insists on speaking in cryptic prose.
Tyrion and Varys start to worry that their marriage is growing stale and worry they’ve missed opportunities to experience life as they’ve never really seriously dated other people. Without the help of their drunken marriage counsellor they start flirting with dangerous new friends in a bid to find new thrills. After a disastrous bondage session, Tyrion and Varys gingerly ice their genitals and reminisce about the time an argument about a shipwreck led to intense lovemaking, sighing “those were the days”.
Let’s talk Shapes for a second.
So I only like Nacho Cheese shapes, see. Every time I try a different flavour I just find them gross and disgusting and go back to my precious Nacho Cheese shapes.
Last night I went to buy Nacho Cheese Shapes. “That’s odd,” I thought. “The box looks a little bit different…” And then to my horror I noticed ‘it’. In the top corner, that little triangle that blared at me with such glee, “NEW AND IMPROVED!”
“Oh no,” I thought to myself, dread creeping into my system. I grabbed hold of myself before it took over. “Okay, let’s be rational about this,” I said anxiously trying to convince myself the world wasn’t ending. “It does say ‘improved’, so maybe it could actually be better? It does say it has more flavour now.” So I bought the box and anxiously rushed home to see what had become of my precious Nacho Cheese Shapes.
It was as I feared, they were completely different! “Noooooooooooooooooo!” I wailed silently in my head. How could they do this to my precious Nacho Cheese Shapes? They’ve changed everything! What am I going to eat? What am I going to snack on? Will I have to starve to death every afternoon between lunch and dinner? WHAT DO I DO???
On the plus side, they don’t actually taste too bad and are now my second favourite flavour of Shapes.
BUT THEY’RE STILL NOT MY PRECIOUS NACHO CHEESE SHAPES!
Apparently they’re now really bad.
I find it strange that in all of these talks of Shapes, nobody seems to have mentioned Chicken Crimpy at all. They were easily as popular in my school playground as Pizza and Barbecue.
Also the cheese ones are all gross and you’re weird.
Chicken Crimpy haven’t changed, apparently. Just new packaging to match the others.
The new pizza is rubbish. The new barbeque aren’t too bad. A bit sweet, but not awful.
Nah they have less flavour from my experience. Bleh.
Saying that the ‘Hot Dog’ ones that are exclusive to Coles aren’t bad lol.
CHICKEN CRIMPY IS THE FUCKING WORST
YOU ARE
You are lucky that @negativezero is in another country now
Neg and I have had this argument several times
Don’t worry, it isn’t your fault he can’t comprehend the glory that is dixie drumsticks
Dixie Drumsticks >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Poke in the eye>Chicken Crimpy
(ノಥ益ಥ)ノ ┻━┻
I agree that Chicken Crimpy ones are good though. They’re my 3rd favourite.
My long weekend was good (yay Queensland). I saw Civil War on Saturday and I’m totally sold on a solo Spiderman movie. The rest of the movie was pretty good but I’m resigned to most superhero movies being pretty silly and illogical when it comes to plot. The action sequences were pretty great though.
Sunday was RPG day and my character did the following things: took experimental drugs and became extremely paranoid as a result, ruined an ambush by trying to hide in a mill, got chased and stabbed by goblins, and commandeered the cart to escape from the ensuing madness and accidentally drove it into the river, killing one of the horses and losing a tonne of our stuff. To say my character has terrible ideas is a bit of an understatement.
Terrible ideas or THE terrible ideas.
So no to drugs m’kay
Yeah… your character was the one who took drugs and got chased by goblins…
My weekend involved much Dark Souls. Running around late game with a few seeds of a giant tree trolling invaders is such a delight. Those salty tears are far more fulfilling than stinky old souls. >:)
Been discussing starting up a new pen and paper RPG game with some friends, so I threw together six different ideas to get some feedback. All I’ve managed to do is get 4 different people keen for 5 different ideas; so, TAY, feedback por favor? https://db.tt/M4hl1KBt
The Iron Reich one looks pretty cool!
It comes with the added fun of getting to do a Google image search for ‘Nazi mech drawing’
“Dust Tactics Art” – job done!
Yeah, that’s the one that does it for me. That, or PAX Romana.
Rome.
Though I’d push it more towards the Rome-under-siege end of things- Goths in the north fielding Dragons, Hannibal crossing the alps with Behemoths, and the Gauls have learned to raise the dead…
By Jupiter!
I really want to have a look but unfortunately work does not allow me to open the file. 🙁
Out of curiosity, what was the idea that didn’t get any interest?
Wouldn’t have thought that anyone would have an issue with a pdf on dropbox. Quick summary:
1. Star Wars (Old Republic) – Working for the Jedi Order during the Mandalorian Wars
2. Star Wars (Rebellion Era) – Imperial Agents, try to run the campaign in a morally grey area that otherwise doesn’t seem to exist in Star Wars.
3. Pathfinder – Roman inspired fantasy setting
4. Pathfinder – Post- undead apocalypse survival setting
5. GURPS – Steampunk/19th century on the frontier. Mix in some science vs magic stuff and see where we go.
6. GURPS – Super Nazis. Doesn’t really need a description, because super Nazis.
The undead apocalypse didn’t attract any enthusiasm, which isn’t a huge surprise to me. A couple of people have expressed their concerns about their lack of investigate skills impacting on the Imperial Agents idea.
I’ve run Pathfinder in a historical Roman empire with fantasy on the fringes of civilisation. I have to admit that it was one of the most fun games that I’ve run because the core of Roman society was relatively mundane with magical gladiator fights and actual divine clerics of Jupiter and stuff while the frontiers had all manner of monsters, sorcery, and general fantasy. It was also really fun to flavour everything depending on the location and have regional fantasy stuff pop up eg. the players went to Romania so I had vampires and tonnes of undead creatures as well as Romanian mythological creatures (Romanian giants were fun).
The trouble I’ve always had with anything that’s not standard high-fantasy is having an internally consistent world – even if the inconsistencies aren’t exposed to the players they still annoy me. The Roman Empire (and Republic) were so massive, however, so they provide great scope for a fantasy setting and I think magic and monsters can fit in really well. If magic use is in anyway genetic, then the major patrician families would rise on the back of their magic users and leverage them to maintain power – it all fits in pretty well.
Have you read Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn books? Being intentionally vague so it doesn’t require spoiler-tags; In the first trilogy, the noble race has a vast majority of the (genetically influenced) magic users, the magic is a big contributor to the noble/peasant construct and there are fragile agreements between the major houses to not use their most powerful magic users against on another – not that they’re followed, of course.
Ancient Rome has the benefit of existing geography, a full pantheon and a bestiary all created for you as well, so that’s super helpful.
I haven’t read the Mistborn books but that whole idea of narrative consistency is what I try and strive for with fantasy. If magic exists, how rare is it and how does it affect everyday society? With a magical Roman Empire, would they still have had the legions or would they have had magical golems instead? I like tinkering and playing around with settings to get some really interesting scenarios and magic is always fun to play with.
Fantasy ancient Rome is fun because figuring out how and why a huge and powerful republic/empire came to dominate the world is interesting when you have to account for monsters and magic. One of the things that I came up with was using the story of Heracles/Hercules and his pillars at the Strait of Gibraltar to justify why the Mediterranean no longer had any sea monsters. Using the ancient myths and legends to justify how things came about or worked was a fun experience.
I like Clockwork Frontier. A lot of potential in cool gadgets and gizmos
Oh god… why did I spend so much of my weekend in Iron Banner… I don’t even like PvP… still, got all three characters to rank 5, and then got the 250 extra kills I needed for my FWC exotic class item quest. At least the lag subsided after the weekend was over… with the exception of one 6-man team we faced who were quite blatantly cheating.
Trying to job application thingie. Words are hard. This is stupid. Quit again.
My wife’s been doing the job application thingie, now she’s waiting and baking. Everyone at my work is appreciating it, perhaps I need to include that in my salary review.
I’m yet to get to that point. It’s the agonising over whether it’s ok to send off or not. It probably isn’t. So I’ll leave it for later.
Cut to three weeks from now, with still no progress made.
What about baking progress? You’ll feel better with brownies.
That road only leads to further problems. I do not belong in the kitchen 😛
Yeesh, people actually like Game of Thrones?
I actually feel bad for buying Season 1.
It’s just so… convoluted and boring.
Apparently lol. I watched the first 2 seasons & gave up by season 3 because I still hadn’t gotten into it.
It kinda lost me around Season 2, personally. I was promised lich-like bad guys and an endless winter, dammit. But, considering the first five books are generally “everyone’s too busy fighting with each other to notice the zombie horde approaching from the north,” I’m pretty sure when the white walkers eventually arrive in Westeros, everyone of import will have already been killed off, and the walkers will just plough through everyone else.
I liked the books when I first read them, but I found when the 5th book came out I stopped halfway in and never went back. Felt too Grimdark for the sake of it. I don’t mind a darker style etc. but I’ve really got to be in the mood, and I feel like I’m less and less in the mood for it nowadays.
Which is also why I just couldn’t get into the TV series. Plus also knowing every plot point for the first four or so seasons ahead of time.
The major plot points are mostly there, but there’s a lot of divergence from the books in the seasons after the first. I’d say it’s worth watching just because the production quality is high and the acting is top notch, even if you don’t find the story particularly compelling. There’s also the advantage that 10 hours of television tends to be a lot more condensed and engaging than 300 pages of rambling =)
Nonsense, I need more on screen depictions of trenchers of soup
My favourite G R R Martin image http://iwastesomuchtime.com/on/?i=88872
I don’t find it a remotely enjoyable thing to watch, sorry.
Yes. Yes I do. A lot. 🙂
I was up and down on it moment to moment – like it was enjoyable and I liked it, but it wasn’t standing out to me as really “great”. Once I got to the end of season 1 I was hooked.
@scree I stand corrected the early access for Overwatch is active now :O
I don’t know where to use the key D=
I think the link is http://www.battle.net/code or just go to battle net and find an option to redeem codes. Should give you access =]
I figured it out, but thank you.
Also, I am scree #1257 In case you wanna play
@jocon and maybe @distantdrop Managed to convince my guild to let me join them for heroic HFC so might actually see a good portion of the raid this weekend =O
Let me know if either of you were interested in joining, as I understand it for this second group the primary requirements are 700 odd ilvl, dont be bads and keep up attendance.
I would if I had any chance of getting up 20 odd ilvl in the next week or so.
Also, not having done HFC on lfr let alone normal or WoW at all for a year would probably put me in the bads category for trying heroic.
Also only have the Highmaul level ring.
I could try to get the ilvl and competence for a heroic raid I’ve never done, with experienced people I’ve never met, as quickly as possible so I can do it before it becomes irrelevant in a couple of months.
Or i could do something less stressful, like playing through Dark Souls 3 without leveling up 😛
LFR won’t teach you anything except how bad other people are at literally everything. I’d recommend you watch Line of Sight Gaming’s Two Minute Tips series on HFC bosses and find a normal difficulty run on Raid Finder to join. If you’re DPS, as long as you’re pulling 25K DPS you should be fine. If you’re a tank, watch those two minute tip videos five times each 😉
700 will probably work on the lower level but you’d want more moving to the upper floor or to the roof. Good luck with the raid though! Our guild cleared heroic HFC a while back but we were never able to get the numbers for mythic so we’ve just been running carries of alts and new guild members instead.
My hunter actually meets them minimum requirements, 701 ilvl prob one lfr run from 715 ring which is roughly a month away from legendary, however xpac is way to close for me to even feel like bothering.
Only thing that might bring be back is to pvp before all the changes or setup a new alt.
It would be nice if there was some kind of embargo on using recently deceased artists’ works in advertising. Just finished looking at a trailer for the new CoD, and the inclusion of a cover of Space Oddity was tackier than a carpet installation conglomerate.
As someone working in finance who isn’t completely driven by greed and self-interest can I just say this budget is the most revolutionary brilliant piece of work I have ever seen come out of this government.
Good to know.
If I was to gauge as a percentage the total number of clients I met in a year who wanted to meet with an adviser with regards to using super to minimize tax I would estimate that total to be around 85-90%. Almost all of which were on some of the highest income brackets and were essentially hoarding assets for an eventual tax free environment.
I think the biggest surprise about this budget is how completely unexpected it was, this kind of legislation from a coalition government is borderline insane. I would expect something like this from the greens, pity that they wont touch negative gearing.
I honestly haven’t read it.
As a mid-low income blue collar grunt, while it will affect me it won’t change how I live much.
Oh I’m in the same boat, it has 0 impact on me as an immediate effect but it does address an ever increasing global problem with wealth inequality. It’s not perfect but it’s considerably more radical than I would’ve expected from this government. Essentially it strives to even the playing field a bit more and that’s important because our economy does need help to transition and this budget strives to find that help from the wealthiest portion of the population (not some token 2% tax).
I really need to set aside some time to read the budget soon
Ok, application finally sent!
Bleh 😛
I had that problem on friday. so stressful, but it feels good when it’s done
One of the biggest problems is I need some kind of external approval before I can proceed. And my external approver was MIA all day so I was stressing out pretty bad 😛
In the end I got a “no this is actually really good”, which I found hard to believe.
Hooray! I had some help too but in the end just had to send it.
DAWN OF WAR 3!!!!!!
How awesome do those Howling Banshees look? The almost-stone aesthetic is gorgeous, they look like they could have stepped right out of Dark Souls
Just remember, cinematic doesn’t equal anything. I’m waiting until gameplay shows up before I get any excitement out of this. Also which direction are they going, more down DoW2 or back to their roots in DoW1?
According to the PC gamer article which I forgot to add (http://www.pcgamer.com/dawn-of-war-3-inside-relics-biggest-rts-yet/) it’s a lot more DoW1 than 2. Base building, strategic point capture and the like. Also, knights are in!! Hooray for Micro-Titans!
Ahhh, excellent! Will have to read when I’m on lunch break 🙂 thanks
OMG so hype =O =@ D= I WANT IT NOW!
FOR THE EMPEROR!
@pupp3tmast3r
I am completely addicted to Overwatch. I will have to buy it when I have monies.
What characters do people like to play as?
Also, I really suck at tank. I don;t really understand the role of tank. I…don’t get it. Can someone explain?
Put simply: absorb enemy fire in chokepoints so your team has room to push objectives forward/move around, while trying to physically close the distance between you or the enemy team.
If you’re a Reinhardt or a Roadhog, the idea is that you shield up or move forward and take hits so others can get a more damaging shot off. Without a tank it’s too difficult to move through the congested areas in all of the maps.
Ah, i found that I just died a lot as a tank. I don’t think it’s really the sort of thing I’m good at.
I prefer defense
it’s easy. If you’re a tank make sure you’re the one getting hit over everyone else =P Reinhardt is a really good place to start as he basically jumps in and out of combat making sure the rest of his team doesn’t get hit.
Edit: Also tanks are really effective in locking down control point maps.
As Reinhardt, I ended up smacking into walls a lot =P
lol don’t use his shift button unless absolutely necessary (e.g. a bastion that’s in turret mode or an enemy reinhardt who’s also shielding) It’s best used on large slow targets to close the gap for you to smash them with your hammer. That said don’t bother charging into them if you’re going to find yourself surrounded by enemies, without his shield Reinhardt can be very squishy. Use your ranged attack and shield the most and pop into cover when your shield runs out.
You basic premise is to make sure your healers and dps can do their job without getting shot.
dps?
I ended up playing Black widow and nobody would be a healer. I always try to fill in the gaps and be helpful, but I swear some people just want to play their favourites.
I was never that interested in being a healer until I needed to fill a role when taking on a world boss in Star Wars The Old Republic. I took on the backup healer role since a team of about 15 people only had one healer and it turns out I did a great job. I realised that I really enjoyed the support role so I’ve essentially been playing a medic or machine gunner in games ever since often both at once.
DPS is an acronym for Damage per second usually used in MMO’s as a count of how effective a damage dealing class is. It’s also used as a synonym for classes/characters that focus on dealing damage over all else or are effective at dealing damage. aka you playing Black Widow would allocate you as DPS =]
Ah. Black Widow was the only time I died as I wasn’t used to playing sniper class and we had no healer
A lot of the damage classes in this game are hit and runs, Soldier 76 is the closest I’ve found to being a medium range kind of meaty damage dealer; also he’s a really good starting hero 🙂
I hope to get in soon but I’m looking forward to playing as Roadhog aka Australian Pudge. A lot of the characters look like a tonne of fun.
I thought Junkrat was the Australian?
I’m fairly certain Roadhog was also Australian because of the whole mad max vibe.
Possibly. Junkrat seems to have the Aussie accent
If you pre-ordered you should be able to play now, also there’s a free for all beta access ihn a few days for everyone (i.e. anyone who’s pre-ordered or who hasn’t).
I’ve not played overwatch but generally speaking the tank role in a team game (this is based more on mmos than shooters) normally has some ability that makes them dramatically more resilient. It’s usually either increased damage resistance or temporary immortality, while making them more visible.
They also tend to be a lot more dependant on the healer than other classes so if you’re dying a lot it might not be your fault, the old saying is that if the tank dies its the healer’s fault, if the healer dies its the tank’s fault, if the DPS dies it’s their own fault.
What’s a DPS?
I’m hoping to play Mercy more, but it’s a bit hard when I’m trying to to fill the gaps we have
Oh sorry, the DPS is the dedicated damage class. The kind of character that’s generally fairly fragile but does high damage, they’re generally expected to know when to fall back if they start taking damage and let the tank do their job of absorbing fire
That would explain why I was a shitty black widow XD
DPS: Make things die
Support: Make the people making thing die make things die faster
Medic: Stop things dying
Tank: Get hit so that other people don’t die while you don’t die
Hey people, so we’re doing our first Warhammer 40,000 session in Geelong (my family warehouse/my home) on the 25th of June. There’s still time for people to join in and get a 500 point army going! We’re starting as noobs (at least for this edition!) so there’s no better time to start 🙂
Max keeps coming up on my bed and giving me a cuddle, then going to the window to look at the birds.
Finally got a chance to play some Elite last night. The new monitor is preeeeeeeeeeettyyyyyyyyyyyy. Or at least it seems like it is. I haven’t played in ages, but the orange sure felt more vibrant than I remember it being. Also switched sticks to use the newer one, which has less stiff buttons. It’s kinda weird. Almost tempted to go back to the old one instead.
This week can seriously go fuck itself.
On the plus side – DOW3 reval was real nice
Oh and i bought regicide last night (finally) it brings the splat quite nicely.
Regicide is the chess one?
That’s the one. It seems quite cool so far. Picked it up for $11 from greenmangaming with their current 20% off promo.
I think this has been one of the worst weeks in memory
It’s up there.
Way to kick things off, May, ya bastard
Woo, Iron Maiden tonight \o/
Cruz has dropped out of the Republican nomination, seemingly clearing the way for Trump to contest the presidency.
Um, America, what are you doing?
Edit: Suspended his campaign, not dropped out. Local radio is hopeless.
Basically the same thing, more or less.
America is going to ruin us all.
edit – on the bright side, Bernie just won Indiana for the Democratic nom.
The absolute worst thing about Trump’s run at presidency is that it’s acting a smokescreen for everything on the democratic side. Under normal circumstances Hilary would be under a lot more scrutiny but this whole election has devolved into a conversation about Trump.
Eh, Hilary has been pretty widely scrutinised for basically 30 years.
I think she’ll be a fine president.
Until the FBI gets her indicted! *crosses fingers*
Come oooon, Bernie.
To be fair my statement is moot given there’s about 300 different things I could think to label as “the absolute worst thing about Trump’s presidency”. But yeah I get your point but it has distracted the nation if not the world from what an election should really be about.
There’s nothing that I’ve seen that makes Clinton any less qualified to be president. Seriously, she’s an experienced politician, an experienced policy hand, and would be a fine president.
I don’t have a dog in the fight between Clinton and Sanders. I think Sanders has several positions I agree with, but I doubt he’d be able to achieve a bunch of them. Clinton isn’t as far on the left (but she’s still very, very reasonable), but I think she’d be able to work them through the legislative process a lot better.
Either way, as long as the answer at the end is “one of those two” I’m happy.
I’d just really like to see super-lefty Bernie in there. Just to shake things up a bit, do some work on closing the gap on income inequality. Hillary seems pretty right of Obama, and I don’t think right is where they need to be heading. (Sure, it’d be another male president and getting a woman instead would add another tickbox to ‘progression’ bingo, but getting Hillary out of the way first means Bernie would have to wait until next term… and how many years does that guy have left?)
Of course, Bernie is so far left that Trump might actually seem like a viable alternative to republican voters who would otherwise find him distasteful, because ‘at least he’s not a socialist’.
I think comparing Clinton and Obama is a bit hard, as on many things they’re in lockstep. She is a pretty deft hand, and I think that’s getting lost in the Berniemania- she would be very, very good
Sanders is only “far left” by US standards. Here he’d probably sit comfortably in the Labor Party- and that’s OK! I just feel that the Clinton/Sanders stuff is a sideshow, the Clinton/Trump matchup is much more important.
HOPEFULLY that’s a foregone conclusion. (Per the joke Obama made at the correspondents dinner. “This time next year, someone else will be standing here… and it’s anyone’s guess as to who she will be.”)
He does seem to be the worse of two evils though.
Good, Cruz scared the bejezzus out of me
To follow up on the statement, who was the last Republican candidate who didn’t scare the hell out of you?
John Huntsman.
Maybe it is just due to the extra coverage this election is getting but none have really scared me.
I have disagreed with policy or thought they would make a bad president but haven’t worried me that much. Something about Cruz just really unnerves me though.
NUMENERA: TALES OF THE NINTH WORLD
At long fucking last.
TONIGHT 7:30 SA TIME
cc @popdart5 @tech_knight @blaghman
If all goes well today I’ll be there no worries!
Looks like the switch has just been flipped. Users have been informed of the change to the program, bracing for incoming deluge of e-mails.
Pray for Mojo.
Note to self for later: Got that call today.Yay, Steven Universe Season 1 Blu-ray get! \o/
Oh I forgot to mention, watched Civil War over the weekend. Thoughts –
I don’t know if I had too much hype for the movie but while I enjoyed it and thought it was one of the better MCU films retrospectively I feel it was ok? Plenty of awesome action scenes and Spidey + Black Panther were the highlight of that movie for me. For some reason I enjoyed BvS more from a story perspective. Also the premise for the Superhuman registration Act felt incredibly weak with Stark feeling they should be held responsible after Wanda blows up a floor on a building while to be fair he basically brought Ultron to life. I think for me what let it down was it felt like a generic sci-fi episode where the heroes do a flashback episode of devil’s advocate eventually coming to the conclusion everything they did was for the good of all. When the subject content could have been used as so much more like it was in the comics.Haven’t seen it but I imagine you’d really need like a season of a TV show to really do that topic/story justice.Was kinda surprised they decided to just try and cram it into a stand alone movie tbh.
Yeah it was a tall order for sure but it’s such a polarizing event that it sucks they didn’t use it to the fullest. Here’s hoping they make a few more surprise hits like GotG and fewer generic popcorn flicks.
Welp, just went to see The Jungle Book remake, and I walked out after about 30 minutes.
Just too dull for me.
Was going to hold off, but fuck it. Preordered Stellaris.
CRUSADER KINGS
IN
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
Yeah. I need to do that I think.
My preorder-trigger finger is itchy, I can’t see any scenario where I’m not buying Stellaris.
The questions are: first up, aliens or humans? If humans, peaceful Star Trek humans, or kill-the-heretics space marine humans?
The Blorg look down upon you skeletoned wastes of Carbon
PURGE THE HERETIC, XENOS FILTH.
Got a Halo Reach and Fable 3 double pack on 360 for $20.
Fable 3 worked, Halo Reach didn’t, so I went to G2A and got a Halo Reach key for $11.
Honestly, I’m more than happy to pay $20 for a copy of Fable 3.
Bought Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds on Steam yesterday – turns out they’ve fixed the major problems.
I miss playing that game, destroying armies with mass Droidekas, giant numbers of them just rolling at them, looked so epic 😀
I remember playing a 2v2 game where I got rushed out pretty early, but not eliminated. Found a few mines in the corner of the map and set up a heavily fortified, militarily-focused base and just focused on getting out an army of droidekas and AA mobiles. My ally played a heavily defensive game, with me tributing him most of my ore, until they launched a large attack on him and I rolled in behind them and destroyed their (mostly undefended) bases.
Their hit-and-run style also works too considering how fast they are by themselves. I love watching them just move.
So Sid had a bath yesterday. Unfortunately, the bath thing wasn’t working, so Sid had to stand there for ten minutes soaking wet while the lady tried to fix the shampoo and conditioning rinse.
Poor Sid, hope he wasn’t shivering
He was until he saw the cat. Then all he cared about was the cat.
Soooo bored at work, no e-mails and competed all my reporting stuff earlier this week :@ So to get things kicked off lets start with @jocon how’d you go last night? Manage to get your bearings after logging back in?
And @scree fare any better with at Overwatch last night 🙂
I know how you feel: I’m sitting on a camp stool and occasionally pressing a button.
Yeah, fine. Didn’t end up heading to tannan yet.
I think I’m just too far behind to try for a hfc spot. Could afford a carry no worries but don’t think I want to own a status symbol I didn’t earn.
Reckon I’ll level up a druid alt to 60 so I can boost it with herb/mining once legion comes. My hunter has 700 engi/inscription so I’m gonna need some way to get mats :p
As a reference I’ve gone up 20 odd ilvls in 2 weeks just from doing dailies and LFR and killing the world boss in Tanaan, very do-able considering I’ve only been playing 1-2 hours on weeknights to grind out dailies.
We’ll see. Let me know how the trial with that guild goes.
Yeah. i’m getting better at Tank and stuff. It just sucks that I tend to be too good for easy, not good enough for medium.
From what I’ve seen so far of Overwatch, Reinhardt would definitely be my jam, shielding others and charging humans into walls 😀
I remember seeing in the closed beta that they had a mode that was basically like Urf mode from LoL. So Reinhardt’s charge was on a ridiculously low cooldown and could be spammed with abandon. It looked absolutely awesome.
With the small amount of characters Overwatch has, an URF mode can actually work, URF sucks for LoL IMHO, you always end up seeing only 12 or so champs played cuz they’re broken beyond belief in URF.
Also that does sound hilarious, HUGS FOR EVERYONE! >:D
Shield hugs!
Oh god total flood of support tickets overnight.
Send help, drowning ;_;
RPG folk, this looks fun: http://misspentyouth.robertbohl.com/
Sounds like a setting for an anime 😛
Edit: Then again in anime, “friendship” would be a bard-class buff that’s too OP for D&D to keep in their game, gives too many stats and sometimes invulnerability 😛
You can shade it that way, for sure. Could also be a Little Brother-esque near future or full on Hunger Games
Sounds like a combo of Microscope and a generally nihilist setting. I imagine something like The Matrix or Hunger Games would work pretty darn well in this.
Got nominated for some award thing thanks to the projects I’ve been doing. So that’s nice.
Amusingly, I can’t actually attend, thanks to the fact that I’m still doing the work I was nominated for, and that timeslot is one of my busier sessions. Should be fine to send the boss instead.
Probably for the best. Was told to think about a speech, and I’m not sure award thingey audiences would be receptive to what I had in mind. (“It needed doing… so I did it.”)
“I’d like to thank… me, for being so great at my job!”
Old, old story, but:
At my previous job, we ran a leadership program that the Governor of South Australia was the patron of. He’s generally a good sport, but there’s a whole bunch of protocol involved in having the Governor at events, and my Boss at the time had to manage a bunch of it.
So it gets to the end of a function which he’s at, and my boss gets up to propose a vote of thanks. She’s been dealing with governor protocol all day, long day.
So she gets up to give the standard “I’d like you all to join me in thanking…” speech and immediately launches into
Boss:”i’d like you all to thank me in…”
Governor (before she even realises what she’s said): “Thank You!”
Boss *Turns the colour of a strawberry*
“I only came here with the promise of free food, and am disappointed only canapes are being served. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see how much Pâté will fit in my pockets.”
Reminds me of a funny story. My memory’s a little fuzzy on some of the finer points, but here’s the gist:
When I was at uni, I lived in a residential college with some graphics arts students. These guys had worked on a group project for some design, which their lecturer was so impressed with that he recommended they submit it to this prestigious industry award thing that he’s involved with.
So. They fine-tuned the project a little and the group leader takes point on getting the design in. A few weeks go by and the group leader comes back all ecstatic – they’ve won a major award. They’re over the moon. We’re talking thousands of dollars and I can’t remember if an actual internship somewhere prestigious or just industry cred that looks good on the resume.
Either way, we’re talking black tie dinner, dudes at the table, drinking and having a good time, waiting to get their moment on stage for the photos etc…
Except when the time comes for their award, the group leader’s the only one whose name gets called out. He ascends the stage, shakes hands, gets his little trophy and cheque, and descends the stage, before heading out of the auditorium.
Group starts freaking out. OK, a representative sure, but why weren’t their names called out as participants? Where the hell has fucking Fred gone? They’ve grabbed their lecturer and are trying to sort out what’s gone on and eventually it becomes clear.
Group leader Fred has altered the group design enough to claim it as his own, and has submitted the design individually under his own name alone. He is the sole recipient of the award money, splitting it with no-one. The awards committee has done nothing wrong, it’s all legal, he’s going to get away with it.
The boys spend the rest of the night sinking into their seats, glaring at everyone and everything in sight, snagging every glass of free booze they can get their hands on. They sit in stunned, rage-filled silence for the rest of the ceremony, eventually staying back so late that they are there when the clean-up crew gets to work.
I can neither confirm or deny that they departed the event in a shitty, baby-blue VW combi van packed with hundreds of dollars crockery and cutlery, or that guests at my mate’s share-house would years later be asking why they had dozens of giant plates with gold-leaf awards-event writing on the base.
Pâté is one of the greatest of foods, and I should never be left with it unsupervised…
Ooh, looks like Thrustmaster is putting out a standalone throttle designed to be used alongside the T.16000M. Interest piqued.
Also seem to have a remodel of the 16k with a sick black and orange colour scheme. Shame they didn’t take the opportunity to add a couple more buttons to the stick.
Half Life 3 confirmed!
Or, E:D colour scheme, lovely. 🙂
So I went into my room with the intention of having a nap and my bed is a complete mess. At first I was confused because I didn’t remember untucking everything. When I went in for a closer look, there were muddy paw prints on my bed. Sid had decided his bed wasn’t good enough and made mine so it was comfortable for him.
I had to remake my bed and wash my doona.
But I bet you can’t stay mad at him
No, I couldn’t. I may freeze tonight though
Oh look who remembered her password.
Who? Who? *looks around* Who?
HI! 🙂 Long time no read.
Woo! Welcome back to the, uh… quiet house.
Was it @scree?
=(
=)
So mean
Not I!
Hi there!
Should I do a Callie cosplay for Pax?
No you should do Marie.
No. DX
Ok fine then I’ll do Marie.
Giggity.
Whatever happened to nicknaming every girl? *popcorn*
Squid Girl? 😛
TALK AMONGST YOURSELVES ON KOTAKU AUSTRALIA
Ok fine then I’ll do Marie.
Aloha from the island of Hawai’i!
Just spent the last 5 nights on O’ahu on the North Shore where the hot sauce is crazy hot, the shrimp are fresh and the taco’s are filled with fish.
So driving on the right hand side of the road is nuts. Like, actually nuts.
It’s not just reversed, it’s weirdly mirrored.
So far I’ve been on the wrong side of the road twice when it mattered. I was also today completely unassumingly sitting in the “fast lane” going 5 mph (yeah don’t start me on miles…) and got honked at.
Settling in to 8 nights near Kona on the big island, check list for this week is snorkling with turtles (5 mins down the road), evening trip to an active volcano, waterfall hike somewhere and potentially stopping in at one of the highest rated restaurants on Yelp in the entire US.
Hope all is well in the land down under.
PS: American toilets are weird… there is easily 4 or 5 liters of water just sitting in the bowl.
Edit: double post.
Maaaaaaaan. Iron Maiden killed it last night. Hands down one of the best gigs i’ve been to. Bruce sounded amazing, for a man who fly’s the entire band from gig to gig in their 747 & last year had a fright with a cancerous tumour on his tongue, he sounds amazing.
The rest of the band sounded amazing too, and looked like they were having a ball. I was in awe when I finally got to see Steve Harris in the flesh belting out those epic bass lines Maiden has. I think I was just so stunned last night trying to take it all in, I really feel like I need to go to another few shows on the tour.
Also must say the support act ‘The Raven Age’ weren’t too bad, I kinda wasn’t overly into the idea of them since Steve Harris’ son George is one of the guitarists and they only got picked cause well his dad is the founding member of Maiden.. But hey they held their own, even if their sound was a bit generic which isn’t always a bad thing.
I’d have to say they’re in my top 5 for best live bands i’ve seen.
Felt mentally drained after dealing with family today, been in bed since 5pm, decided to play some Firefight in Halo Reach.
ELITE’S ENGINEERS BETA IS UP!
Holy shit that changelog is HUGE. Some really cool stuff in there though, and some long-needed fixes too. Hype.
Gonna download it at work and stick it on a USB so I can avoid the giant download time at home…
Sounds like it’s time to bring my Anaconda out of retirement.
…heh.
Hello fellow Anaconda pilot.
I’ve been waiting what feels like years for this. You’ll start to see more varied builds for the larger ships now.
As a fan of beam lasers, I am very happy to see the addition of the huge beam laser. Eve though I don’t actually fly a ship with a huge hardpoint 😛
With all the engineer stuff, we’ll hopefully see more varied builds for everything now.
I’d love to run full sized beams on every single point on my Conda and have it be a viable build but heat and power just can’t cope.
…but it’s SO PRETTY!
Oh yeah, number one most important feature of the entire list:
ACTUAL HONKING!
It’s fantastic, for 3 seconds. 😀
Must try this tonight.
Red Hot Chili Peppers new single dropped overnight, and it sounds good… 🙂
It’s called “Dark Necessities”.
Here’s the link.
I finally managed to try out Overwatch last night and it is really, really rad. I even managed to get play of the game on my first match (Zarya ftw). McCree and Junkrat were also two of my other favourites that I was able to try out for a little bit.
Funnily enough, the one character I seriously disliked was Torbjorn. It’s like the TF2 engineer but with nothing else but his turret so he’s a bit lame. I couldn’t get Reinhardt to work either as I kept charging off cliffs. Still, I can see myself playing this for a long, long time.
I play as torbjorn a lot. I just wish you could build more then one turret at a time.
I am also playing a lot of D Va, but end up killing myself because I’m not far enough away from my mech when it self destructs
If you’re boosting (running too, I think?) when you set off the self destruct it’ll keep flying forward. Good for getting away from it, bad if you’re a terrible shot with it (like me).
That’s handy to know!
Reinhardt is really fantastic if you emphasise shield use to support your team, and save your ultimate to counter others. I find that I mostly use his charge for repositioning more than attacking cause the charge is massive risk/reward. Get it wrong and you’ve screwed your team over by not being there to shield them.
I find Reinhardt a bit tricky because he can only melee so he needs to be relatively close to the enemy. It throws out my sense of positioning compared to the few other characters I tried.
His reach is enormous though, so you can almost treat it like a shotgun in terms of optimal range. Also, his E is on a low cooldown and does considerable damage so it can be used to throw off ranged characters while you approach them.
I think I adapted to him fairly quickly from the amount of time I spent playing as a demo knight in TF2 😛
D Va and reaper are also close range characters. Their guns are less effective the further away you are
I haven’t played either of them yet so I’ll probably struggle to figure them out too. I’m figuring out a core set of characters before I try out the entire cast to get a handle on how to play the maps and stuff.
If you go to (I think it was) Hero Gallery on the main menu and open the info tab (that has the abilities listed) there’s a difficulty rating up the top right in stars. Might help you pick a couple of options.
Alternatively:
Pharah – Solider
Junkrat – Demoman
Genji – Scout
Black Widow – Sniper
Mercy – Medic
Mei – Pyro
Torbjorn – Engi
Tracer – Spy
D.Va – Heavy
Wait, I thought Tracer was like the scout
She is a bit, but only really has horizontal mobility. Her abilities make it super hard to keep track of her and she’s great at repositioning unseen so she’s more like a spy in play style.
Genji has a double jump, an ability to block all bullets, and does crazy close range damage with his shuriken when thrown in a cone.
Having said that, based on appearances they look like they’d be reversed 😛
I’m trying to find something I can play in every class so I can be asset to team.
So much better than Battleborn, to the point where I almost feel sorry for them.
I wouldn’t say Battleborn is bad, they’re just very different games. It’s like comparing Borderlands to TF2, mostly because they’re almost literally Borderlands and TF2… 😛
Junkrat main with Mercy as my second choice, should probably try one of the tank classes too and broaden my repertoire.
Really digging Overwatch.
I enjoyed my few beasty stints as Bastion, mainly because attacking teams didn’t check corners, even after being slaughtered from the same fucking position (I really should have done more repositioning of my turret mode, but they kept feeding the grinder…).
Managed a game-opening triple kill as the sniper lady, who is a decent character.
Tracer is fun to zip around as.
Tried my hand at healing when allocated the healer in the random heroes mode, and it was surprisingly fun.
McCree is just so much fun to use. Very stylish.
I completely suck as Torbjorn though. Just like, really suck.
Definitely going to spend some more time trying out other characters to see what gels with me.
My Battle.Net ID for those that want it is TheCracksAU#1470
I WENT SWIMMING WITH TURTLES AND TOUCHED ONE!
The turtle didn’t appreciate that, expect a knock on your door from Hawaii 5-0 sometime soon
Hey TAY, what is the cheapest way to buy Unravel on PC?
Hey, guvs!
Jimuuuuuuuu.
Hi.
Hey, crax
So, after playing some overwatch, I already have some shirt ideas! Some are a different style to what I’ve been doing though.
So far
3 junk rat designs
1 D Va
1 Lucio
Genji! Genji! Genji! Genji!
*ahem* Genji?
Sure, when I finally get to play as him. I’m usually stuck as tank or support.
Also, do you want to add me? scree#1257
I think I did send an invite earlier this week, did you get a request from Chyrone#1100?
I don’t know, sorry
Wii U/3DS Humble Bundle, if anyone is interested:
https://www.humblebundle.com/friends-of-nintendo-3ds-wiiu
Affordable Space Adventures looks worth it by itself, and it’s in the $1 bracket. They’ve also confirmed that these codes will work on Aus/NZ hardware.
Already own it, thanks to @tech_knight
I really enjoyed Freedom planet. I haven’t had a chance to play affordable space battles. I also like Shantae but I really suck at it
Had a look at Freedom Planet, it looks…very similar to Sonic. Not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just trying to find a delicate way to say “rip-off”.
This is just a tribute?
It’s not a rip off. It’s inspired by Sonic. It plays a lot better in my opinion.
Well it’s got the same sort of art style as Sega Genesis Sonic did (Which is still gods darn gorgeous to this day IMO), has multiple characters and they all have different abilities, kinda like how Sonic and Knuckles worked (With Knuckles being able to glide and smash through walls), but there’s a lot more characters and they’re more combat based instead of environment based.
I’m definitely feeling like getting this, though the only gripe I might have is it might be a little hard to see what’s going on in that sort of speed while fighting.
I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in over a year and they said they almost didn’t recognise me because I’d put on a bit of weight.
I might have to start exercising methinks.
Yeah, I’m starting to get a little fat in the face. It wasn’t so bad when it was just the love-handles, but now it’s time for more drastic measures. Like… actually getting back into the gym.
I’m just feeling really tired right now.
Not sure whether I just want to get home and sleep, or fire up Diablo 3 for a couple of hours.
OH MY GOD THESE NEW DRIVES
https://gfycat.com/SpecificAdorableCranefly
I NEED THEM
They are power hungry and it’s a tight squeeze running a combat-capable Sidewinder with them but damn they are awesome. Shame they only come in size 2 and 3, and my dear Diamondback runs a 4 😛
Captain America Civil War’s alright. I liked the part where it was Marvel Studios Presents: The Raid. I also liked the part where it was Avengers 2.5. The plot of Civil War was always iffy with me in the comics but it seems like in the movie ideologies quickly give way to egos, which ultimately is alright by me.
Also I enjoy the thought of Falcon and Bucky in a Volkswagen Beetle being grumpy to each other on a road trip. “Can you move the seat a little-” “No.”I concur with the general consensus: Overwatch is hella fun.
Took me a few games to click, but yeah, I haven’t had this much fun with a multiplayer shooter since Quake 3 Arena.