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1,314 responses to “Talk Amongst Yourselves”
Good morning 😀
I am almost back to full health, our kitten was super-well behaved last night, and I got a fresh wave of tingly excitement this morning that I get to marry my best friend next year. Alright, Monday!
Not a typical response to Monday…
Kittens can’t be tamed! It must be plotting some sort of long con against you guys. That’s the only reason cats behave well. Trickery, I tells ya.
Oh god, probably. She was such a jerk at the weekend, but last night was so good. I think it was because we gave her a hot water bottle and she thinks it’s a little wobbly throne.
That is way too adorable to mentally picture.
I take it you are talking about the kitten, and not your betrothed?
If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the fetal position under my desk.
Good idea, I might just join you (although under my own desk, obviously… unless you’ve got a big desk?)
We can deny reality together.
MUCH better reaction to Monday.
Went, “ah, fuck it” this morning and applied for the fabrication job… Tentatively scared and excited for the possible change…
Also happy Monday TAY! How are we all?
\o/
Good luck! Change = holiday, etc. Regardless of how it turns out, least you get to try something new, right? \o/
Precisely, if anything something to break routine and gain new life experience!
Morning all.
Team Pop was ROBBED in the Splatfest. Oh well, 18 Super Sea Snails for the loser if you hit max level is still a ton! But anyway, Splatfest was awesome, if only for the amazing change in the visuals of the game. I hope that night-time skin for stages gets used again more often, maybe once a week.
Besides that, on the weekend I played in a Smash Wii U tournament and got rekt in losers round 2. My worst placing in a loooong time. But the tournament organiser delegated the TO role to me after I lost, so that was a fun experience. It was a surprisingly large tournament, with 57 entrants for Smash U, so TOing that was a bit of a challenge. This weekend’s tournament will likely have 100+ players, so good luck to the organisers for that.
How was everyone’s weekends?
I was on team rock D= Sorry.
I didn’t get to play too much as I was working on @tech_knight s stuff for cosplay.
No need to apologise! Well played to the victors, and enjoy your Super Sea Snails! I played a stupid amount and reached the highest rank for the Splatfes, since some lunch outing my friends organised got cancelled.
I got half way into the 99 point level and called it, I’d done my work for team rock by that point.
Splatfest is the closest thing to organised teams. It was pretty cool to roll with the same three people for a couple of hours, we started to lean on each other’s supers to great effect. I ended the night on a 15 win streak.
Had the same experience last night, to the point that I started to feel bad for the opponents. Kept getting new teams and then smashing them again and again.
One thing I learned during Splatfest: if you get your win streak high and talk to Judd, he gives you cash. Got something like 1400 from him last night.
Outside of Splatfest, you can talk to Judd once per map rotation (every 4 hours) to get that bonus =)
I played in lots of little bursts, which I think put me at a disadvantage because I never got to play in that one strong team. At one point I had to play a 1v4 haha so that didn’t do me any good. Got 10-5 k/d but of course only managed to get <10% coverage xD
Well that’s crappy luck 😛
Also, yeah, didn’t mean the Judd thing was only during Splatfest, just that that’s when I found out about it 😛
something kinda similar happened to me today
https://twitter.com/scree06/status/617869446200168448/photo/1
Serrels retweeted it, omg, stay calm…
ROCK! \o/
Actually, I’d say there was a good chance Rock was going to win based on numbers alone. The amount of games I had of Rock v Rock were hilariously high.
I didn’t get to play the Splatfest because I have no Internet at the moment D: I did vote for the winning team though so hopefully I get a few Sea Snails even though I didn’t actually play 😛
Morning TAYbies. Had a fantastic weekend and made full use of the sun in Sydney.
Played some more Batman on Friday night and am really digging it. I agree with @markserrels piece though – just let me use the gadgets I have rather than it giving me new toys all the time. That said, on [other gaming website] I did a review of it (which I’m pretty happy with for once!) and gave it 4.5/5
Watched Terminator genysis on Friday night Solid 5/10
Wow, that’s a seriously low score. I’m guessing 4 points for Arnold and 1 because it’s Terminator?
Basically loved the first 30mins then it just went down hill and they pulled a T3 putting way to much comedy into it. Its a 5/10 Terminator movie its not a bad movie in general but yea didn’t work for me as a Terminator movie imo if that makes sense.
Darn. Expectations lowered appropriately. 🙁
Good morning TAYbes!
I battled manfully against Tonsillitis last week, and am only really coming out the other side of it today. I had my Dad’s 50th Birthday on Sunday, so I had to make a speech.
I kicked off with a visual gag: Thank you everyone for coming, Dad told me to keep this short but I”ll do my bes- *drops 6 sheets of paper all stapled together*
I also will paste the speech below for some lol’s:
Good afternoon everyone,My name is Nathan and it gives me great pleasure to talk to you about Steve today. At this auspicious milestone of 50 years there are many stories acted out over time, and I would like to speak about the multifarious individual that is my Dad. As is the human condition, my father is a complex individual with many interesting paradoxes and contradictions.
One such example of this phenomenon, is the fact that for much his life Stephen was a plumber tradewhom was exposed to and cleaned the most vile and filthy sewerage pipes throughout Melbourne. It was during this part of his career that us McLean’s learned of his double life in which he is known as ‘The Cleaning Nazi’, cleaning every bench top and other surface in sight. His obsession with cleanliness is legendary, after living for four years in the Gold Coast Steve flew back into Melbourne one afternoon and within 20 minutes of touching down he was re-arranging the pantry and cleaning out the fridge. When asked why, he replied AND I QUOTE “Don’t wanna end up getting Salamander”, it took Tayla and myself a fair while to explain to him the difference between a reptilian animal and a bacteria called Salmonella.
Dad is also known as a very patient man, biding his time to build his own successful Fire Protection business after developing much experience in the Industry. In a father-son weekend with Dad in Echuca, Steve attempted to extoll these virtues by teaching me how to play golf. Unfortunately his patience didn’t last past the second hole, as he had sliced the ball one too many times and wrapped his driver around a tree and dragged me by the arm back to the car.
My favourite story in recent memory though relates to Dad’s character as an agreeable, if not shy individual. Many times I have sat with Dad in a pub watching him nod in agreement and making encouraging sounds to raving lunatics during a conversation but attempt to argue like a Queens Council when discussing anything with his family and close friends. His default position is to take the opposite view point of the person he is speaking to. For example, on Monday night this week I was speaking to Dad about the pasteurization process of Milk and how Agricultural scientists believe it is healthier for you to drink than unpasteurized Milk. Steve, totally incensed by my invoking of scientific views on a subject responded with (And please excuse my French) ‘FUCK the ScienTicks!’. Highlighting the view of many enlightened and learned Men.
These inconsistencies in character to do not extend to all parts of Stephens life, and set’s an undeniable example for myself, my family and all that know him. For example his work ethic is fabled and cannot be questioned over the course of his career. Many times arriving at work a few hours before his colleagues to ensure that everything is set up and will run smoothly for the day, I have no recollection of Dad ever taking a sick day in the time in which I have known him.
Further to this end Steve is very generous, helping as many people as he can during his travels. For example buying his son a new set of tyres, taking a hotel receptionist their favourite coffee and walking the family dogs sometimes three times a day to ensure their happiness.
Dad you have achieved much in your time on this Earth, however not once has it been at the expense of your character as a decent, morally sound and generous person. The amount of people here from all different parts of Australia are a testament to your good nature, and I HOPE that you remember to thank these people in your speech. Thank you for everything you have done for me and the family Dad, I’m looking forward to sharing many more laughs and fun with you over the years.
Hahah, aww your dad sounds alllllright.
Sooooo, that Women’s World Cup final…I wouldn’t want to be supporting the Japanese right about now
It’s like they forgot that nothing is meant to happen in soccer. 😛
Centre holds it. HOLDS IT. HOLDS IT!!!!
YOU’lL SEE ALL YOUR FAVOURITE SOCCER STARS
ARIAGA
ARIAGA II
BADIAGA
ARUGLIA
BINSOSA
That half line goal was pretty majestic however.
Hola Tay
I had a lazy weekend, more or less. Played some ANNA’S QUEST on Friday night, then worked more on my Pip Boy. I’ve got all the foam cut out for the main structure of the pip boy, now comes the joy of hot glue. It’s coming together pretty quickly though.
Went out Saturday night for a mate’s birthday, and then went to retrieve my car on Sunday. Other than that, finished off Batman. Spoilers for end
I liked it. I’d pretty much picked who the Arkham Knight was, given there’s very few people that close to Batman, and I probably would have liked a little more interaction with him right at the end. I’d also have liked a physical fight with Deathstroke, because that was one of the best boss battles in Origins. Still, I liked that the game tied up a lot of the plot threads from the other games and John Noble was a really good scarecrow. The Knightfall protocol ends it probably the only way the series was ever going to.A Monday Morning Question: Given the skills, what replica prop from a game or movie or whatever would you make?
A pip boy for my oversized iPhone :*(
Chaos Eater… And War’s armour… Actually a complete Darksiders cosplay would be rad as all hell
Which pip boy are you modelling? Me and the missus were going to get onto some Fallout cosplay, having the pip boy editions will sure make it a lot easier to do so
A million years later, but I still want Penny’s book and communicator watch from Inspector Gadget. And I know it’s pretty much just a laptop and smart watch but whatever.
Or Sheera’s sword, actually, that was super badass.
I used to use a permanent marker to transform notebooks into secret book-laptops with screen and buttons. Inspector Gadget was the bomb.
The sad thing is I already have the skillset needed to make anything I want. I have actual qualifications in nearly every fabrication process. Seriously lacking in motivation, drive and persistence however.
I’d love to make a full metal set of the Elite Knight or Havel’s armour from the Souls series.
Just sitting at your desk as a customer comes up and you turn around in full knight armour like “Can I help you?”
Its funny in my mind
Take some commision work for people for Supanova, I’d love to be able to realise some stuff I don’t have the tools or skills for.
Check the rpf.com, you could make a nice side-income and make a lot of people happy 🙂
A Mirror’s Edge runner bag 🙁
I’m sure you can either get that, or commission someone to make it for you
I want this one:
http://acidforblood.net/2008/11/mirrors-edge-ru/
They are like hen’s teeth. The yellow ones are less rare but still get snapped up every time they appear on ebay.
Seriously, ask a cosplayer and they will probably be able to recreate it. There are some insanely talented people out there
True! I’ll probably just wait and pre-order whatever special edition Mirror’s Edge Catalyst comes out with 🙂
If not, commission =P
How good would an actual pokedex be?
EBGames was advertising a pokedex thingy, https://ebgames.com.au/loot-200401-Pokemon-Kalos-Region-Electronic-Pokedex-Loot I think. May be a different one
There’s tons of them on ebay, but how good would an actual pokedex be, that can take a photo of a pokemon, work out what it is, and tell you all about it? ^_^
Very true. It shouldn’t be too far away, right? With all our technology
An Omni tool for my Samsung Galaxy S4, seems fitting for the phone’s name 🙂
Motion Tracker from Aliens.
Ganondorf’s gauntlets from Hyrule Warriors.
Pepakura them. Or foam them, whichever
Shorts!
They’re easy and comfy to wear!
EVERYTHING. Cost is always the issue though.
A proper working Omni tool from Mass Effect.
I told you to use foam glue! D=
Eh, it’ll be fine.
I’ll test it all on some scraps and if I don’t like the results I’ll go searching.
Just made my daughter a Captain America Shield and 1940s style costume for Supanova a few weeks ago. Sacrificed the old Foxtel Satellite dish to do it, it came out okay.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/70699761@N00/18821149338
http://i.imgur.com/JBxuLV8.jpg
Dude that’s awesome
Was my first try at this sort of stuff, my daughter was stoked and we had a great day. Really want to get into making stuff now, just need to acquire a lot of new skills!
http://i.imgur.com/gwoRUf7.jpg
She was walking tall and proud, what more could a Dad want?
You should repost these on the current page, they deserve better than a necrothread!
I’ve never worked out the TAY system of current pages etc.
I’m hopeless!
People tend to refresh the current page to keep up with conversations rather than read back 🙂 just start a new post and it’ll show up
I downloaded a bunch of mods for Fallout New Vegas last night. It makes me want to start again … again.
ENB? ENB!
That’s not a mod, it’s mandatory.
Oh good so it’s not just me then 😛
Soooooooo pretty!
Who?
What’s an ENB?
I don’t know. /o\
That makes two of us /o\
(& @sernobulus)
An ENB is a post-process graphics injector, that is typically used to ruin any aesthetic choices the developers made in the interest of crushing blacks, ruining subtlety by increasing contrast, and adding various effects that the developers didn’t (which is the part I like, things like different types of Bloom, SMAA, that sort of thing).
But I like it as it is =(
Goooood morning TAY
Spaghett is on a day off work, I’ve got the washing on and I’m waiting for it to finish, bout to watch some Youtube and then when the washing is done and hung probs play some Heroes of the Storm 😀
I stayed up late and played many hours of The Witcher 3. I think I’m getting a little too into the RPG side of it. No longer content with just not fast traveling, I am now making sure that Geralt sleeps at night by finding a suitable campfire, inn or abandoned structure (although he has been known to barge in on peasants and commandeer a spot by their fireplace). I also make sure he eats and drinks every day (regardless of health depletion) and goes hunting to replenish his food stocks.
Haha, can be fun to get way into it like that.
Great with games like Skyrim where you can mod in all those food/sleep/survival ect mechanics.
Morning morning! Took a long weekend after end of financial year mind-fuckery. Broke my exercise routine. Played a bunch of Witcher 3. Woke up at 9.
Feels really weird…
Nice, switching up routine can be a great way to reset your brain after fin year stress
Yeah, except I slept for 8 hours instead of the usual 5-6 and now I feel woozy. Pretty sure my body wants me to hibernate like a bear.
Played a bunch of Arkham Knight yesterday but I’m struggling to find reasons to continue playing. The game is good, very highly polished and well put together but almost too much so. It never really feels like I’m actually playing the game and rather I’m just guiding Batman through it at the Rocksteady’s discretion. Even when they present an option to choose whatever mission you like it’s still super restricted to what they say you can. Want to follow up on this story thread? Nope, you can when we say you can, go do this instead. Also, it doesn’t matter how many gadgets you have, 90% of the time they’re entirely useless. Occasionally they’ll throw in something allowing it outside of specific story mission uses but it never feels like I’m really carrying around anything truly useful.
I’m enjoying it when I do play, there just isn’t any drive to keep playing it.
Perhaps 100% the main story, which then unlocks all other side quests with no restrictions. You can then complete 7 of the side quests to obtain the first of two ending cut scenes, completing all 14 gets you the second ending. So yeah, a bit weird but even though there’s 100% showing at the top of the missions dial you haven’t *really* completed the story until you do a bunch of side stuff.
I completed the Man-bat side quest and that was about it. Was pretty fatigued by the end so I ended up just Youtubing the final end movie.
Wait, I can finish the main quest without ending? I’ve been running around finding Riddler trophies for days while the main quest sits at 80%…
Yeah that’s how I interpreted it. Maybe Blaghs or Redartifice can back me up here, but the main quest is sorta just like a Scarecrow side quest and even though you 100% it, you don’t instantly get either of the end movie cutscenes.
That doesn’t sound good. Having a range of different options and gadgets to work out how you want to do things was core to the batmang experience.
Is it vary metroidvania in the sense that you need item A to use in manner B to get past area C and until you have that the area is pretty much impossible?
My understanding based on Mark’s recent article and comments I’ve seen on Twitter is that the game gives you like 20 ways to do things then every mission is an explicit tutorial on why you’re going to use this specific device to do something the way the game is telling you instead of figuring something out for yourself, or using another equally effective way that’s slightly more logical. I think a good example is that instead of using a small explosive to blast a fan in orer to get into a building, you have to set up a series of ramps in order to drive the batmobile through a wall, or something? It seems a few aspects of the game have shoehorned in the Batmobile for no other reason than “we spent a lot of time making this”.
The Batmobile is actually used pretty well for a lot of things, it’s just that there’s less indoor areas where your other devices used to get their time to shine (and less of the Asylum stuff where to get to a place you were required to use one specific device.).
For example, and this is hardly a spoiler, there’s no occasion where you throw an ice grenade into the water and pull yourself around, because now you’d just grapple launch or batmobile launch to cover the same distance.
Kind of? You can go pretty much anywhere from the outset but it very much limits what you can actually do in the areas until you’re meant to be there. Would probably be cool in an exploratory way if vast majority of the game didn’t look like all the other areas.
I’m fairly close to the end and the gating off of sidequest stuff was annoying me too, but it does unlock them over time and there’s usually a fair bit of stuff to do.
The issues around it not letting you approach things your way goes away after a bit. The early part of the game is very Batmobile focused. IMO it’s the worst addition to the game. Controls like someone added wheels to a solid brick shithouse. Big big big tip: RB twice to go into first person mode while driving it in car mode. Makes everything a million times easier.
There’s some utterly shocking bits in it with the Batmobile though. Really shit. Shame because plot-wise it’s better than City by a mile and when it works, it really works well.
That was one of my bigger complaints with the Assassin’s Creed series, too.
I Shadowran on the weekend. It was a milk run job which didn’t go to plan (but of course). Ended up shooting up a gang hideout to get back a case that they had stolen. Somehow the group has gone all Payday style and we all wear crime masks when we go loud on jobs. I have a tiki mask because I’m from Hawaii. I also had trouble getting into a bar because I’m a Gnome and Gnomes are not common in Seattle.
In other news, I’m planning on setting aside money to buy some 40K stuff. That’s going to be a very expensive day when I get around to it.
Which army? If you say an Adeptus Astartes army I will weep.
Not that it matters, play what you want 😛 BUT SO MANY SPACE MARINE ARMIES
Craftworld Eldar actually. 😛 Kinda want to get something big like a Wraithlord or maybe even an Avatar but that’s pushing the budget a bit. I managed to snag a good set of units from a friend who wanted to get out of 40K for a decent price and I just want to get a few choice units. Going to be expensive regardless of what I do. :S
What? Avatars can’t be that expens….
$65 FOR A TINY BLOB OF DIECAST!? ARE GW HIGH!?
I swear they used to be cheaper. There’s no way I would have had as much as I did at those insane prices.
They did use to be cheaper. A 10 man Marine tac squad was $35. Now it retails for $55.
Sorry, $68! for a Blood Angels tac squad!
$60-$70 a box of anything that’s not super huge is pretty much the norm. A giant Wraithknight is my super hopeful dream of a purchase but that’s $125 for just the one model. Granted it’s awesome and cool but I can get more stuff with that money.
Honestly, I would much rather play Epic. I keep thinking of ripping some DoW models, making my own models and printing it but that still limits the armies 😛
I know a friend of mine goes through a Chinese seller for some of their stuff. They can get a model casted and shipped for less than they could buy it in store which is just absurd. The only downside is that the quality is slightly diminished but they save about $10 per purchase (with more savings buying in bulk) so they feel it’s worth it.
@popdart5 I did that for a bit. The only issue I had was that the differences in quality is noticeable to many and my FLGS was replaced with a Games Workshop store and they have that silly “only official models allowed” rule that kills the hobby.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:392773 😀
That is amazing. I really need to get myself a 3D printer and starting messing with stuff like this.
I have a metal Avatar that cost less than that! I think that Games Workshop claiming that they were switching to plastic (and then resin) because of the cost of tin was one of the great con jobs of our time.
I’ve had armies of Imperial Guard, Eldar and Dark Eldar.
NEVER SPACE MARINES.
I’ve had SPES MEHRINES twice. Both times Blood Angels (back in 2nd and 3rd edition). Otherwise Guard, Tau, Necrons, Dark Eldar, Chaos, Orks. No Eldar though
Eldar were great. People never seem to realise just how great their heavy weaponry was at destroying Space Marines until half their army had gone missing a few turns in. Got to the point I wasn’t allowed to deploy all my Grav Tanks at once due to all the whining. You can talk Mephisto up all you want Jake but a few Pulse Laser salvos to the face ruins everybody’s day.
Jetbikes can get scatter lasers now which is hilariously stupid. Suddenly they’re now super mobile heavy weapons platforms and you can have as many scatter lasers as you have jetbikes.
Yeah the new codex is a bit silly and overpowered at times.
Man, I remember when that codex first came out. The screams of “CHEESE!” deafened me. That and Riptide hate. Then I stopped paying any attention to the game.
Yep, I think Eldar is the ultimate mix-n-match army. If you know what you’ll be playing against you can make life extremely miserable for your opponent. My mate used to routinely slaughter my Space Marines with Dark Reapers, 2nd Ed. Warp Spiders and Banshees with power swords.
If only I had the time, money and dedication I’d have the raddest Tau army around! RAILGUNS! RAILGUNS EVERYWHERE
Ditto on my Nekron army, GREEN LIGHTNING BOLTS!
Played and finished Anna’s Quest over the weekend. Considering it’s the first real adventure game I’ve played in 5 (maybe even 10?) years, I had a lot of fun with it. Absolutely loved the art, story was good too.
Also spent tonnes of time joining in on Splatfest. Aside from the usual fun of the game, you also start to see a whole lot more teamwork happening between players who stick around in teams for ages. It was fantastic!
Morning TAY
I played a bunch of Bloodborne over the weekend (still no Internet…) while Pants silently judged me from the next room.
My dude is named Ben the Dazzling and he fights with a cane and he jumps a lot and is covered in blood a lot. It’s pretty great. Beat the first two bosses (the big furry guy on the bridge and the Father Werewolf guy in the graveyard) – now up to the Poison Beast guy in the church/hall/thing. Gotten pretty okay at doing the visceral attacks so hopefully only need a couple more goes at him (if I do it within 5 tries, Pants said he’d buy me an ice-cream, so… incentive)
You’ve got red on you.
You Died.
So I revisited Watch_Dogs recently. When I left it off after my aborted commencement near launch, I had barely completed three missions then got distracted by side content which didn’t go well as many of the missions such as fixer contracts and criminal convoys are too tough until you’ve unlocked a few skills on the progression tree. I resolved to finish a few story missions to familiarise myself with the game.
After finishing Act 1 (whch was of middling interest storywise) I started exploring again. I really like the design of the world and the fact you can interact with it in ways other than shooting. What’s unfortunate is that Ubisoft didn’t trust that this would be engaging enough for the average player and interspersed all the interesting ideas with gun battles. It’s not just that an unimaginative player might see killing all the enemies in an area as the only means to resolve a situation – no, you have to kill all the enemies in order to eliminate a threat to “hack” a cell phone which has codes on it in order to open the door to the next area, which is a contrived car chase where the guy you’re chasing doesn’t know you’re following him until his associate happens to tell him at the exact moment you’re eavesdropping on him via CCTV, and then he patiently waits for you to reach a conveniently located sports car before driving away.
I hate driving gun battles in GTA because I find it really tough to get a good line on my target while driving. Watch_Dogs subverts this issue by having enemies in souped-up vehicles pepper you with auto rifles while you sit helplessly in your car unable to shoot back, hoping that the “neutralize” prompt will appear on your screen as you blow through some traffic lights. It really makes me miss Sleeping Dogs and it’s sideswiping/ramming mechanics.
I think this would have been a better game if they took most of the weapons away leaving you with just your pistol, and dialled back the gunfights to make them more stealth-oriented. I like what they’ve done with the car chases but they get overused. But maybe I’m a crazy person. Maybe it’s not possible to make a decent sandbox game without lots of gun battles and car chases, at least not one that will sell.
I currently have a glitch where I can’t complete the mission I’m on, something I learned after doing it three times can only be solved by quitting the game and re-entering. I guess it wouldn’t be such a big deal if the mission I’m on didn’t go like this:
– 2 minute cutscene (which in fairness, is skippable)
– turning left and hacking a camera, which triggers an unskippable cutscene
– listening to exposition while walking slowly, having to alternate between walking and running because the NPC you’re talking with walks slightly faster than your top walk speed, but slower than your run speed
– walking around to scan for a guy with a jailbroken cell phone to eavesdrop on his call
– getting two or three short unskippable cutscenes as a mini-tutorial for something we’ve already done four or five times at this point
– running to the nearest shitbox car available
– an annoying car chase (see a few paragraphs up for how I feel about those)
– after evading/defeating your pursuers going to a house
– enter said house to start a poker game
– HAVE THE GAME TELL YOU THE POKER GAME IS PRESENTLY UNAVAILABLE AND YOU THEREFORE CANNOT PROGRESS IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER
– Accept that games bug out sometimes and reluctatly hit the “restart mission” option
– Repeat x2 before googling the issue and finding out that it *might* fix it if you quit the game and re-enter before you re-do the mission.
– Lost interest and go to bed
I can only hope that these issues are not recurring. In my googling for my particular issue it seems that the poker games in general seem to be rather buggy, so there’s a thing to look forward to if I ever planned to do all of the side content, which I might do if I am able to complete the goddamn story mode and still have time left before universal entropy reaches maximum and all of existence collapses in on itself.
I remember having an issue with that poker game but I don’t really remember having to do anything special. Maybe I came back to it another day and it was fine?
Also:
I friggin’ HATE when games do this, and I have no idea why they do. If you want to role play the situation a little and walk you get left behind, so you have to runstopsprintwalkwaitnorunhangon, which really ruins any drama or tension the scene could have had. Seriously, why do games do this?
It’s a bad way of ensuring you can catch up to the NPC if you fall behind, same goes for them also running a little too slow in other games. How hard is it for it to be set where the NPC slowing down is only true if you’re a set distance BEHIND them?
The weird thing is I’m sure there an an Assassin’s Creed game where you could park your character alongside a friendly NPC for an exposition-walk and put the controller down – Ezio would automatically keep pace with them for the duration. I think it was either Brotherhood or Revelations. That mechanic was gone in ACIII/Black Flag, and apparently in Watch_Dogs too. WHY?
Witcher 3 had a system where the NPC would go as fast as you did. If you walked they’d stroll ahead. If you break into a sprint they did to to keep just ahead of you.
Was going to bring this up. It works wonderfully. and works on foot and on horseback.
I think RDR did it with horses IIRC. GTA too, I think.
It was Revelations, I just finished that one
Bit slow to join in the conversation this week, but the game you’re looking for was almost already made. Multiple ways to achieve objective. Possible to complete the game by killing almost nobody, or almost everybody. Just needed a bigger open world feel rather than the limited (large, but limited) sequential areas it had.
It was called Deus Ex…
I never played the original (and I understand trying to go back and do so now is an exercise in frustration – like how System Shock was amazing but a chore to play nowadays just for the ridiculous control scheme) but Deus Ex Human Revolution is one of my favourite games of recent years and I think Mankind Divided is going to be a smash.
Still, I’m hoping Ubisoft get a little more ambitious and creative with their next attempt at Watch_Dogs, should one be forthcoming. I feel like I’m playing Assassin’s Creed with more guns and less parkour.
Morning, TAY.
Was in bed for most of the weekend with a crook neck, but still got up and tried to do stuff.
I’ve been getting into Mechwarrior Online, but it’s full of pay to win crap, which dampens an otherwise decent mech game.
That said, Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries is amazing.
Would’ve played more of it if I hadn’t been so tired from my neck soreness. 🙁
Yeah the old Mechwarriors are pretty great.
Online not so much.
I’m starting to feel like the F2P boom is slacking off. I’ve tried a number of games that offer F2P and all I can think is “instead of this microtransaction shit, I’d rather pay $50 to just unlock everything so I’m not butting up against a paywall”. But then I might stop playing after enjoying myself. Instead, I can pay $5 to unlock a few more hours enjoyment. Then when I come up against a paywall again, I can pay another $5, because, why would I stop playing now? I already sunk $5 into this game!
People were raving about all of these games like War Thunder and Hawken and whatnot but the shine comes off the apple after a few hours unless you’re prepared to go down the microstransaction rabbithole.
I’ve been seriously considering getting into Smite for a different multiplayer fix than what I’m used to and I really respect the fact that instead of buying in-game currencies to unlock gods, I can pay like $40 to unlock all of them forever. Granted, there are in-game currencies for skins and other extras but that’s totally fine by me. Only problem is, I’m kinda shit at it. I tried it on PC to dip my toes in before committing to paying $40 for the founder’s bundle and get access to it on Xbox One, and foudn that while I enjoyed playing the game, I had no idea what I was doing and getting good is probably a matter of researching strategies than simply playing and learning through trial and error, which would probably ruin the day of anyone on my team.
Then there’s the MMOs I’ve been interested in but quickly grown bored with like Star Trek Online and The Old Republic…
Uh, anyway, f2p games mostly suck. Yeah.
Mobas have a steep learning curve. Expect to suck for longer that you might at other games. Also way better with peeps you know.
I think the problem with f2p is that the player friendly way (like lol) is only profitable if the game is super popular (like lol)
So they either make the microtransactions aggressive and hope to scrape enough profit before people abandon it or make the micro friendly and gamble on it becoming a runaway success. Which it probably won’t.
I might give it another go this week, since taking a break from Destiny I’ve found myself mindlessly scrolling through reports on reddit a lot lately instead of doing something as gaming, which is truly laughable considering the number of games I presently have available to play and for whatever reason have chosen not to.
Just bear in mind with MOBA’s it’s all about hitting your head against a wall. Remember that scene in Kill Bill 2 where Uma Thurman keeps 1-inch punching that wooden board until it breaks? Yeah that’s pretty much Moba’s worldwide. Eventually it just clicks and you get the genre; bright side is once you get one Moba you’ve got a pretty good starting point for all the others.
Mech 2 Mercenaries and Mech 4 Mercenaries are pretty much the only games in the series worth re-playing, IMO. The whole ‘Mercenaries’ shtick of running and maintaining a unit on costs was fantastic.
The world is worse for the lack of good Mechwarrior games. Hawken is probably the closest that’s come out, and it’s not actually a proper game, just another F2P PVP glorified tech demo.
Anyone else notice this? http://i.imgur.com/Bkr2ho4.jpg
It’s almost as generic as “hero with looking back with gun on shoulder”.
It’s our own faults though. I’m sure somewhere there is a market research group that provided evidence for what types of video game imagery worked best for advertising/articles. Now as a result, we get to see the same generic compositions for every video game, where variation is solely based on what genre the game is.
It’s a take on the whole “It’s a large world, and your this guy/badass/badass-wannabe!” trope with video games like these. To be honest how else could you show this kind of game off where it’s an open/almost-open world game where you play as your character and shoot up enemies? You’re not part of any army or squad in either of these games so you can’t show something like that, you can’t really just show off the beautiful scenery, you’d then wonder what kind of game this really is (If the screenshot is all you have to work with at a first glance, since it’s part of the article’s thumbnail)
Is it just trying to be “rule of thirds” / “golden ratio” / “some other thing” composition style though? Item of interest in the foreground on the left, draw eyes to landscape background on the right. I mean, landscape photos don’t really work without something compositionally “near” to offset the “far” stuff, so it makes sense to have that be some character.
So I have been jumping back into Heroes of Might and Magic V and I’ve been playing through the campaigns starting from the beginning. I have so missed playing this game, up to the point of playing with friends online until 2am in the morning 🙂
Inferno for life!
I absolutely love Inferno. They’re just so damned good at lining up in a convenient spot for me to KILL THEM ALL HAVEN RUUUUUULES *runs*
Oh you thought you could handle my army? Well I just added 50% to the size of that army and they’re on your archers’ faces, have fun with that while my archers use chain firebeams on your clustered army! 😀
The Griffon Empire will burn!
OH NO YOU KILL ALL MY STUFF
*Archangels*
OH LOOK EVERYTHING IS ALIVE AGAIN
I got the Skyrim Legendary edition…
… You bastards, what have you done!!! Life outside of this game is so hollow and dank!
So. Damn. Amazeballs.
Haven’t installed the DLC yet, as i want to experience more of the original game before i start adding bits.
I think I finished Skyrim before the DLC came out and have never gotten around to actually playing it. I don’t know if the DLC being installed affects the base game other than giving you the capacity to build a house (which is expensive so not something you’d do until later on anyway). I don’tknow how the story missions get integrated at all – I assume it’s like Fallout 3/New Vegas where new missions markers appear on your map, but presumably you have to get past certain points in the game for these to become unlocked.
Yeah, probably best to just not install the DLC, to avoid confusion.
I read what the changes are before starting.
One increases vampire raids on towns.
Another changes a town in the game and adds more raids from another factions of some such, plus the house.
Another adds a new island.
Seeing as it does change SOME parts of the original, I figure it’s best just to stick with as is – might instal it once i’m settled in.
I finished Fallout 3 before the DLC came out too, then bought/installed each one as it was released (back in the days of yore before season passes existed). My wife recently started a fresh playthrough of Fallout 3 on PC which of course in a GOTY edition with all the DLC bundled in that I got in a sale for 58 cents or something. Because it already has the Broken Steel expansion installed (which takes place after the end of the main story) the radio occasionally makes announcements like how great it is that the Lone Wanderer has restored fresh water to the wasteland – meanwhile my wife hasn’t even reached Rivet City to talk to her father about his plan to start restoring fresh water to the wasteland.
Dont click if you don’t want to spoil the last DLC for Skyrim (the dragon + island one)
I believe the last DLC let’s you tame and ride dragons?Probably smart to hold off on the DLC, as installing Dawnguard will cause random vampire attacks to start happening.
I thought they were a great addition.
They are, but probably not something you want to be dealing with if you’re just starting out.
Now go mod skyrim.
*maniacal laughter*
Here’s one to get your started @chuloopa
That’s not thomas the tank engine.
OHHH YEAAHHHHHH!!!!
Unfortunately I got it on 360 due to the fact that I’m sure computer wouldn’t like me very much and it would look like jack at the lower quality.
Now I have a really pretty game I can’t download mods for.
Sad face.
Check the system requirements again – I found Skyrim was quite forgiving of older hardware whilst still managing to look pretty damned good. Within reason, of course.
Personally I think the DLC works best if incorporated as part of the base game, for you to stumble upon organically instead of consuming after you’re ‘done’ with the main quest.
Mods, though… yeah. Maybe a modless ‘pure’ game is a good idea first time around. Apart from maybe some texture packs to pretty things up, some UI improvements, some anti-crashes and community patches, some quality-of-life map/ratio fixes, some of the towns re-done, vegetation improvements, some new spell mechanics, some perk/levelling adjustment mods, some… OH GOD HOW DID I SPEND ALL SATURDAY MODDING SKYRIM AND NOT PLAYING IT?
I think I’m insane. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Not only do I have Undad to finish off by November, and (possibly) a two-volume anthology to put together in 2016 (pending successful funding), and a 23 issue fantasy epic in stall mode, a lengthy novel to beta read, and an experimental short-form piece… but I’m also thinking of making a jump into game development via a program like this.
Inspired jointly by Telltale, Ace Attorney and Anna’s Quest, I’d really like to dabble in a branching narrative in a way that’s manageable by a one-man team on a limited budget (although not really looking to mimic any of the examples I’ve mentioned). I’ve already got some cloudy concepts set in the universes of my existing books, but I’m also considering developing a brand new IP.
So. Insane.
Modern take on a Choose Your Own Adventure book? 😀
Something like that, yeah!
I need to investigate this software more thoroughly, to see if it can accommodate other game things like inventories or QTEs or puzzles, or whether it’s just straight visual novel.
Sounds amazing! Sughly’s game inspired me to get back to writing as well! XD
Oh yay, that’s cool! What’s in the pipeline at the moment?
Polishing up pilot draft at the moment.
Sweet! If you need a set of eyes at any stage…
Well not QTEs, but inventories and puzzles are something you might be able to fake in the game using flags and such, even if there’s no explicit support for it in Tyrano. Failing that it might be something you’d need to develop yourself to make possible.
Thanks. I’ve read a bit more about it, and think I can probably at least fudge an inventory by requiring certain clicks to progress at all, and making the use of items heavily context-dependent. Might not be necessary in the end, but it’ll be good to have the option.
Shanetastic 10/10 Would buy.
Am I steaming right?
Hey Shane, I’ve had hands on experience with Tyrano builder and it is incredibly easy to use. Even branching them out is still quite easy, I started one myself (as I actually play tested the thing) and I actually screwed myself over by making it in one location as it can be separated by location.
If you have any questions, i may be able to answer them.
Thanks, I’m sure I’ll take you up on that! 🙂
no problem. I just hope I will be of some help
I was doing a little bit of research on that one as I was considering to a Tales of TAY style VN
From what I read it was ok for just creating a VN to share with your friends but doesn’t seem to be well liked as far as comercial applications
Not sure on the details of why not but it is probably going to be hard to do Inventory and QTE. Although it does allow you to add HTML into the page so some JS it possible
There is an advanced mode that allows you to add code and make it more of a game. The drag and drop is for ease of use
So, a text adventure written in BASIC?
In seriousness, what kind of “new IP”? Something you haven’t conceived of yet or something in your head you’ve had kicking around and not put on paper?
Edit: reply fail 🙁
Nah, I can produce some art assets myself, and can scrounge a budget together for sourcing audio (music, sfx, maybe even full voices). So I’m thinking visual novel.
And re: “new IP” I have no concrete ideas yet.
sfx is probably easy, I’m sure there are plenty of resources for that online like an audio equivalent of shutterstock or something. I’m sure there are people you already know who can produce music and would be keen for a little work. There’s probably even a few wannabe voice actors. You know artists already and presumably you’ve got the writing down. So yeah, a visual novel seems pretty achieveable and would definitely be a better showcase for those assets than another pixel art game made in RPGMaker or something.
Yeah, there are plenty of options with regards to sfx (and even looping music). Audioblocks for example, who I’ve used before, and can get unlimited access to for $99. And I’ve got all the art assets I could possibly need, so I think I’m sorted there too.
Voice actors have the potential to blow the budget out a bit, so that’s very much a “we’ll see” element.
I would be happy to be a voice actor just for the exposure. After all, it’s really all anyone should need when doing work like this.
Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind. Be aware, though, that I have a moral objection to paying in exposure, so I won’t be doing that 🙂
…I actually meant it as a joke, but hey I’ll do it anyway 😛
My HeyHey!dar has been on the blink recently. Sorry 😛
Edit: yep, reading back, what you said was obviously a joke. Sigh. Sorry.
@shane Hey, if you do go ahead with this I’m happy to attempt to help. I have a wide range when it comes to character voices. I can do:
– Short angry man
– Short happy man
– Indifferent man (short)
– Regular sized man imitating short woman
I am a composer, and could do the sfx etc. BTW, it was nice to meet you at Supanova, even if you couldn’t really talk 🙂
Thanks, that’s awesome of you to volunteer. What kind of rates would you be looking to charge? Do you have a portfolio I could check out by any chance?
Was good to meet you too!
I’d also volunteer some voicework gratis, though I have no experience in the area, personally feel like I have a shit voice, and need to buy a headset with a working microphone.
I could try to do some if you need females. Did a little bit for a mod in University
Like the others, I’m happy to volunteer. Not sure where I can get to anywhere studio-quality, though. That’ll be the REAL hurdle to getting good VO. Anyone can volunteer with their headset-mic, but cleaning that up is a pain.
Thanks. If I go the VO route (still a big if at this stage), I’ll be hiring pros for most/all of the roles, I think.
Wise call. Despite the best efforts or enthusiasm of many, it’s one of the first things you can tell about fan projects.
Agreed. I could’ve worked with friends on Undad, but it turned out so much better because I invested properly in it.
How about a shared scifi setting free for anyone to create and contribute to?
Space industries thusfar consists of postcards and three short stories.
http://reddeerrun.kinja.com/space-industries-inspirational-art-1667819256
Bought Driveclub. Never got into driving sims, but I’ve always had a passing fancy for them so I really want to cement a liking for this game.
Celebrated both the fourth of july with some friends down south and Canada Day with my fellow compatriots. One would think both days would celebrate different things, but in the end it boiled down to me in a rural setting drinking copiously and shooting at people with roman candles.
Don’t play with fireworks, kids.
Or if you’re going to, don’t set them off on top of your head.
Job opportunity has come up that I’m perfect for and will push my income back up to the point where I can get back to planning to buy a house in the next 5 years rather than the next 20.
Anyone wanna see a magic trick? I’m going to make this opportunity…disappear!
ALAKAZOOOOOOMG
Are you in Sydney? Does this opportunity involve winning the lottery?!
Nope, I live in a country town where decent houses are still affordable…if you can score a job that pays like you’re in the city 😛
If I could live in NZ or Qld and still get paid Sydney money I reckon I’d be set.
Gold Coast and Brisbane you need to make $140k p.a to afford to buy a house or so they say.
Also Gold Coast rates and power is insane and we have some of the most expensive water in the world.
Well shit. Perth it is then. I hear the air is cleaner anyway.
Yeah, My bets are on adelaide or perth
Morning everyone, been a while since I’ve posted new job doesn’t make it easy. So I’ve moved apartments now in South Melbourne awesome 4 story ex business office turned into apartment. I got my own lounge on the 4th floor and setup my consoles and did a network test I got 0.3mbps download and even less for upload. The router is on the ground floor I hard wired up laptop into that and only got 5mpbs down, I’ve been told the place is complete wired as it was an office but have no idea how to tap into it as I’ve never had adsl till I moved to Australia any advice would be appreciated. Also note my room is on 2nd story and I can’t even pick up the router or watch Netflix on a laptop. The people I live with don’t really use the net I found them watching suits on DVD last night. Do I need to change company currently iinet or I’ve been told to setup a server?? It’s all new to me.
If you’ve connected your laptop to the modem/router via a cable and get 5mbps with no one else using the connection then that’s potentially the speed you’re going to be stuck on.
I could deal with that if thats the case but wirelessly I cant even get 0.5mpbs
Good chance the signal is struggling to get up to where you are. Most consumer level wireless devices aren’t designed to push through several floors of a building (presumably filled with cabling, if it’s an ex-office).
If the building has cabling in the walls that you can use, I would find a friend that’s in the know about network cabling/IT and ask them to see if they can find a path you can use to get a cable to the areas you need. Offer to pay them with alcohol, a strip tease, or ideally a combination of both.
Yea I get the wireless signal not being able to go up 4 floors but it cant even get up 1, I think my best option is as you say to try get the current network working, I literally have 15 ethernet ports in my room alone. But I’ve only lived in Aus 6 months and don’t know anyone who would know…. so anyone reading, got a strip tease and alcohol on offer.
Ok so I now get 15mbps when wired but can’t get wireless at all? Got someone coming to look tomorrow
So… Inside Out was pretty good.
It was pretty emotional.
There were lots of emotions. I emoted myself way too much during that movie.
Hi fronds!
Hi Mawt
Soap opera on hiatus whaaaaat.
On Saturday I experienced the labyrinth that is IKEA. No David Bowie adventures, but we did leave with more than we’d intended to get, like ‘oh we could probably use a bigger coffee table why not oooh we need snack bowls’
So not wanting to spend any more money forever I boxed myself into the apartment building furniture and watching anime. We’re watching Baccano! and Persona the Animation at the moment. Both are cool. Persona made me pick up the game again, then drop it five minutes later because I have no idea how anything works in that thing anymore.
Pro Tip for new renting: You never need all of the furniture on day one.
This is day 15 or something so it’s totes fine.
The adventures of Pow and Pants are adorable! <3
😛
YOU’RE ADORABLE
Oh you!
One’s a guy with Pokemon rants
The other’s a guy with a pro-mustard stance
Now join the show and give a dance
for the Adventures of Pow and Pants
“Adventures of Pow and Pants is filmed before a live studio audience”.
“In case of fire, these doors will be locked and cameras turned towards the audience for an impromptu reality show”
This week, one the adventures of Pow and Pants, Pow’s world is turned upside down by the appearance of a wacky houseguest!
*cut to shot of @shiggyninty opening the door*
Meanwhile, Pants is led into the depths of nerdity by playing something called a “megagame”
*cut to shot of pants wearing a cloak in wide eyed terror*
The Adventures of Pow and Pants is brought to you by the ACME soap company! For that fresh linen scent, buy ACME!
*switches off TV*
Maybe we can interest you in “Pow & Pants Hit the Road”?
Adventure game about a private investigation agency starring a mustard-pantsed detective and his psychopathic half-man, half-caterpillar sidekick?
Pow & Pants Save Christmas
Ah, the long awaited sequel to Pow & Pants Ruin Christmas.
I was once part if it…
back when it was fiction :'(
(unless they let me stay at their place when I go to Sydney)
Dude. It was literally announced yesterday that the Baccano novels have been licensed for English release.
I WAS WHINING ABOUT THAT EXACT THING.
I’m buying all of them.
Baccano is awesome.
Finished Witcher 3 yesterday.
An incredibly satisfying experience, and one of the greatest games I’ve ever played.
Now that I’ve batmanned, super keen to get back into it. And Bloodborne.
I’m looking forward to getting back to it once I finish Batman.
It’s totally in the running for my game of the year 2015.
But… Fallout 4. I’m possibly going to give it to Witcher 3 anyway on account of releasing early in the year and everyone always forgets the start of the year because they’re having a blast with the holiday titles.
Also, underdog status.
I think Im getting close. Just finished up Bald Mountain. 80 hours and counting.
My final tally was in the vicinity of 130 hours…
While going through my wardrobe over the weekend, sorting through my accumulated shit to get rid of some of it, I discovered two things I wish to be rid of:
– Borderlands 2 LE loot chest thing with all the other stuff that came in it. Bobblehead, steelbook case, game discs, cloth map etc. This thing is just clutter for me. All the codes included are claimed already on Steam but want to sell the physical goods including the chest.
– Bravely Default LE stuff. Still in the box. Figure, soundtrack selection and hardcover artbook that’s quite nice. I don’t want the figure (not up to standard for me) and I own both of the Japanese Art of Bravely artbooks already so I don’t need the LE’s artbook. It’s a really nice book so I expect it’s the valuable part.
You should have moved that chest when they were going for >$1000 on eBay! 😛
To be fair, they are pretty sweet. I keep my Playstation cables in mine.
That was sealed copies I think.
EDIT: Also I’d part with mine for a fraction of that amount. If no one wants it I’ll probably just throw it away.
Whats the Bravely Default figure? Thats probs the only thing Id be interested in, already have a Borderlands loot xheat (use it for cables)
Is the Bravely Default box a PAL edition? Are you wanting to part with the whole box?
Yes, AU copy. Willing to part with the whole thing – I 100%ed Bravely and don’t think I’d go back to it any time soon, and if I did go back I’d probs just re-buy standard edition on the cheap somewhere.
Oh shit, I’ve just seen how much these CE are going for on eBay. I’ll offer whatever you originally paid for it. Say yes, and just don’t look them up on eBay haha. 😛
Yeah they were very limited. Ebay crazy prices are usually for sealed copies and mine’s not sealed (still in the box though) so that reduces it in cost. Also I just want to be rid of it.
Not sure what I paid for it originally. Will have to check my records.
I believe it originally RRP’d for 149.95 in Australia than eventually got reduced to 144 I remember it being presold out in two days -.- probably the reason I still have mine despite its cumbersome nature.
RRP is probably a good price to go with if you’re fire sale’n, however it is possible to get more.
Up to your discernibility I guess.
That sounds right. Massively overpriced for that though.
I wanted the BL2 loot chest but never ordered one. Since we already have the game on 360 and bought all the DLC the fact it was originally for the PC or whatever is pretty irrelevant.
What’s your ballpark?
What’s reasonable? Feel free to throw me an offer.
The trick is going to be shipping the bastard. Not particularly heavy, but bulky.
I forget where you’re located, are you in Sydney by any chance?
Melbourne
Right, I’ve probably asked that before too.
I’ve no idea what shipping interstate for something bulky like that is worth, I never saw the thing in person but I understand it’s a pretty good size.
Eh, once I factor in the shipping on top of a reasonable offer for the crate itself I’m starting to think I probably don’t need another thing collecting dust in the house. :/
So, this weeks adventure of D&D was pretty bad. We had to fight against civilians trying to run away from devils killing and kidnapping them, when the problem player thought would be a good idea to create an illusion of another devil right in the middle of them. Then we reached the old cathedral of Pelor that had an army of mercenaries waiting.
We waited around until the leader of our guild turned up. When we went into his tent one of his guards sliced open my squires neck and I was warned about fucking with the guild. At which point I had enough, secured a horse and had my character go back to her home to report everything. So I’m out.
I was kind of in and out with the story since I just don’t give a shit anymore, where they went to find a Unicorn to get Pelors spear and then started a war with the devils. As they’re moving through the problem player turns to me and says, “Hey, it’s a good thing you’re character is not here, we can actually make it through this!”. At that point I just grabbed my stuff and left.
Seems like a pretty shitty experience you’ve had overall with this group.
It’s mostly just the problem player, who believes the entire campaign is solely set around his character. Mainly because he was the guy who set up this group.
Is this the problem player who was suddenly the long lost heir to the throne and after that everything encircled him as you paddled up shit creek?
No, the other problem player who keeps throwing us up shit creek.
Current gaming plans for shameless July:
1. Finish Arkham Knight
2. Play through Anna’s Quest
3. Return to The Witcher 3
4. Finish Atelier Ayesha Plus
5. Ar noSurge Plus
I don’t think there’s anything much in the pipeline for the month that I’m hugely excited about so hopefully this will cover it. I was maybe going to grab Onechanbara Z2 but it could wait a week or two, and technically Lost Dimension is in July but it’s July 29 US (30th AU) so not really in the month.
I’m with you on those first three steps, but then I’d go
4) Her Story
5) Grim Fandango (Was most of the way through it then had to reinstall windows, so lost my progress. I have it on PS4 now)
I need to get around to Grim Fandango. Missed it back in the day. Have the remake on PC but haven’t gotten to it yet. So many games and so little time.
1. Watch_Dogs (assuming the glitch I presently have is resolveable and I can finish the story because I’m sure as hell not starting over).
2. Fallout New Vegas (currently on the Lonesome Road DLC then I think I need to do like one thing to finish the main story).
3. Try and finish Arkham Asylum/City and possibly start on Origins.
Skip Origins. It’s shit. If you’re not batmaned out then go straight to Knight or just play Shadows of Mordor as that’s a better Batman game.
I’d like to chime in and contradict @negativezero on Origins – its storytelling is far better than City, imo, and it remains my favourite of the series, purely for the way it characterises and develops the main antagonist. Asylum was great from a gameplay perspective, City ventured into the open-world sandbox scene with mixed results, and Origins fixed a number of the problems I had with City, which were further refined in Knight.
That said, from a chronology perspective, Origins is kinda separate, so maybe play Knight first, and if you dig the storytelling and characterisation in that, give Origins a go.
Yeah, Origin’s plot is pretty good. The problem is the game itself. They fucked with the combat somehow and broke its flow. Some of the boss fights were a pain in the ass too. It’s also a buggy mess and I don’t think they ever fixed it. I never finished it because I got stuck in a room because it bugged out at Batman couldn’t enter a ventilation shaft. 🙁
Having never really been that good at the Arkham games’ combat system, and played each game once through when it came out (thereby having a long break between each game), I never really noticed much of a difference.
The only glaring (non-performance-related) bug I came across was a thug the game prompted me to interrogate but wouldn’t let me do so; not sure if I got lucky with Burnley tower – I was pretty over the whole idea of collectibles at the time, and avoided the fast travel system so I wouldn’t miss out on the sidequests scattered about the place, so may have skipped a few comms towers.
I really enjoyed Origins, story and gameplay.
Disclaimer: I played it more than two years after playing City, so there was no direct comparison to be made in my memory.
Lately I’ve found myself becoming one of those guys who starts games and doesn’t finish them, so my list includes things like Bloodborne and The Witcher 3.
I’ve played like 20 mins of Bloodbourne. Didn’t grab me at all, unlike Dark Souls.
Dark Souls was the one that never grabbed me. Demon’s, Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne all drew me in, but Dark Souls just never did. With Bloodborne though I hit a spot where the only way forward was this one boss, and I just sort of got bored with fighting him. Told myself I’d beat it eventually, but just never turned the game on again.
@rize how’re you going in your return to SWTOR? I just hit 60 last night and found the SoR xpac’s characters/story annoying (aside from the Wookie of course).
THOSE EYES.
THOSE GOD DAMNED SOULESS WOOKIE EYES.
To be fair probably the best voice-actor from the expansion =P
Started doing ops yet?
Nah, got side-tracked playing other characters (and also Splatoon). I’m keen to jump in them at some point, though.
Yeah, overall it’s been good. Finished the story on my Sorcerer which had a couple of really weird out of character missions. Like…I’m a hate-filled force-driven death machine, but HANG ON I HAVE TO SAVE THESE REPUBLIC PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY DESERVE LIFE.
Halfway through it on my Guardian and it’s far better, character wise.
Jedi Guardian was the original storyline before they decided to break it out into class-specific stories, so it’s a really good route. Only one I’ve finished. The final story mission was fucking ridiculous though, I had to have a friend come help me, it was 100% un-soloable. Might have been fixed since then.
EDIT: What I played of the Sith Inquisitor, I tended to go with the cold and calculating kind of evil rather than the overt kick the puppies kind of evil. Happy to do things that might seem like the less immediately evil path if it could end up paying off for her later. Actually really liked what I played of that storyline.
I wouldn’t know, I’m a Guardian with a consistently kitted out healer companion. I slapped my keyboard once and accidentally took out Dromund Kaas.
Sentinels (the twin saber variant of Guardian) probably still struggles with it. They tend to die when exposed to air. Or no air. Or anything. Or nothing at all.
But yeah, the Knight story is KOTOR 3 wrapped in an MMO. It’s been my favourite class story so far.
Oh and avoid the crap out of the smuggler story; I’ve played it to level 46 and completely uninteresting so far. It’s like they tried to recreate han solo but boiled his character down to sleeping with every member of the opposite sex and stealing treasure.
I played a female smuggler and I really liked her. Got as far as Alderaan before I stopped, but it wasn’t the story that stopped me, it was the shitty smuggler gameplay. I chose the wrong subclass and ended up having to punch people and stuff which wasn’t what I thought I signed up for.
Generally didn’t like how many abilities SWTOR had per class. Had to juggle like 12+ things, keep a sequence up, worry about DoTs and all that. It might have changed since then but I sort of look at the way, say, WoW 3.0+ works, where you have maybe 3-4 attacks for single target and another 3-4 in a rotation for AoE, and maybe 1 or 2 utility / oh shit buttons.
I just couldn’t relate to the smuggler story at all and I went gunslinger, I guess after playing the jedi consular story it felt pretty average? The story as far as I got to didn’t impact the war or hell have any larger impact on the Kotor universe.
That’s kinda what I liked about it, felt more realistic instead of the Jedi/Sith stories that are all “YOU ARE THE MOST SUPER POWERFUL FORCE USER IN THE UNIVERSE …. along with the thousands of other players and NPCs” whereas Smugglers is more like “You are Bad-Arse space cowboy that does whatever they want”.
They’ve fixed it up somewhat. A couple of abilities you learn as part of your spec takes over the role of preexisting abilities, rather than being another addition. My Guardian uses something like 6 abilities consistently, 4 on-proc and the rest are very situational attacks and buffs.
I loved my female Smuggler. Seeing Corso’s reaction whenever I had her flirt with someone never got old.
YES! OH MY GOD YES! @rize and @cakesmith can confirm that I constantly bitched about the fact I kept punching people instead of shooting them with my gun. I ended up going the spec that’s all about putting DoTs on enemies because I actually use my gun and EA fixed up abilities so I only use about 6 on my rotation.
*punch*
*giggle*
@rize
I still giggle, except now it’s *PEW* *Giggle*
The female smuggler is actually my favourite voiced character. The voice just suits her perfectly (I remember @rize commenting on it when we grouped up last time). I’m not too sure about the story though. I liked the start of it and loved the end of it but around the level 30-40ish mark it turns you from a cool fast talking space cowboy into a fucking retarded space cowboy that keeps blundering your way into traps.
Fun fact:
The voice actress for the female smuggler voiced the twins Phil and Lil in Rugrats.
Haha, that’s pretty cool actually. Didn’t know that.
I remember at one point you just exploded all the time. Like, every cut scene you blew up.
Yup, my character just kept falling in traps regardless of what I did. It was really really stupid.
I played guardian.
The final boss of the story you have to use the droid companion. 🙁
Oh yeah, I remember that fight now. I did it…I don’t know how many years ago, but I don’t remember it being overly hard. Might have been patch differences between us, or I might have just been incidentally better geared for it? I do recall grabbing some droid parts before doing it…
Might have been partially due to gear. I had trouble with that spec and class even taking on some normal enemies due to having really slow DPS due to needing a bunch of bleeds and stuff on the target to do any decent damage. Made it take too long to ramp up, no burst. And also because I wasn’t playing a tanking build I was finding I was fairly shit at taking a hit as well. That last boss was like a pathological worst case for my build IIRC. They probably nerfed it a lot, this was around a few weeks after release.
I completed the final boss of the Guardian story as a tank solo fairly early (before the nerfing?), and have no idea how I made it through. Guardian story missions were bloody brutally difficult in their first incarnation.
Heh, with my Sith Sorcerer I’m not exactly evil but I will do anything in the pursuit of power. Anything that doesn’t give him any more power he just doesn’t give a shit about.
The only two characters that I ever finished were the Republic Trooper and the Sith Warrior. Both pretty good stories in my opinion although I really liked where the Jedi Consular was heading before I stopped playing.
Never played any of the expansions because I couldn’t be bothered jumping back in.
The Knight and the Warrior have always received fairly positive reviews from players. They’re just really interesting and the companions have an impact, whereas other classes just kind of happen to have companions there.
Warrior was also one of the few times it really felt like your choices mattered since your apprentice was a completely different person depending on whether you went light or dark side.
So far my favourite class stories have been about the non-force users. I feel like it explores more of the Star Wars lore instead of “THE FORCE THE FORCE THE FORCE THE FORCE etc…” that is constantly shoved down your throat in Jedi/Sith
Yeah inquisitor is kind of tailored for an evil playthrough; I’m at a crossroads between gearing up my 60 marauder or taking the altoholic route and checking out all the class stories and getting caught up for the xpac.
@negativezero as well I think the general consensus I’ve seen from my server is that the operative/imp agent story is meant to be the absolute best out of all the class stories.
I highly recommend trying a light-side Sith Warrior at some point.
You get to be noble hero like a Jedi, but a badass, unshackled by the weenie attitudes of the Jedi.
The way that story pans out is really satisfying. It’s a power trip.
(Edit: I’d really love to go finish up some other classes stories in SWTOR. I’ve only seen Bounty Hunter, Warrior, Inquisitor. Just… getting through all the others involves SO MUCH repetition of the planet story quests and all the MMO bullshit padding that makes you grind for gear to get past the sticking points. I’d heard they temporarily did some kind of story-only boosting shit that let you play SWTOR as KOTOR3 instead of KOTOR: The MMO grindfest, but that it was unfortunately temporary.)
They’ve got the 12x class mission boost going for subscribers again transient, so you can hit level 50 just doing the story missions and its active until October (i.e. when the next xpac comes out) So you could effectively play all the classes with just their story missions as a sub =]
@transientmind Yep, this.
Essentially, you level to 50 doing class/companion quests, then do the expansion stories to 60.
Huh. Cool! I actually haven’t yet canceled my sub.
Still… >.< Why can’t they just make this a permanent thing instead of a timed gimmick whenever they have an expansion coming?
To be fair you’ve got another 3 months of the boost, and I was playing casually (average 2-4 hours a day and a bit more on weekends) and managed 1-50 in a week. So theoretically you could easily level all 8 stories to 50 in the time-frame.
Edit: Oh also EA/Bio have said they’re going to make it easier to get to 50 post xpac release so people can jump right into the expansion content with their character. They’re also allowing you to insta-level characters to 60 however that locks off their class story pre-60 (i.e. you can’t go back in time and do them cos the expansion pack takes place 8-10 years in the future?).
2015 has been a weird year. In addition to a bunch of awesome looking JRPGs popping out all over the place, all of a sudden there’s tons of visual novels being localized. AX was this weekend and at it. Umineko no Naku Koro Ni being re-translated and released on Steam with the updated PS3 art (hopefully toggleable to the old art because for that series I actually don’t like the redone designs). The one non-ero VN in the long-running Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke o series is getting a steam release too. And speaking of visual novels about lesbians, JAST are doing the first of the Flowers games (presumably will do all of them) eventually. Sekai Project announced frontwing’s remake of Himawari, G-Senjou no Maou (which hopefully is testing the waters for more of Akabeisoft2’s stuff because I’d love to see Sharin no Kuni get localized properly), Root Double (by the Ever17 guy), a remake of Narcissu, Beat Blades Haruka and of course the big one, Zero Escape 3.
And that’s just this weekend. There’s also the Muv-Luv / Muv-Luv Alternative Kickstarter soon, and a bunch of other stuff all over. I think the second part of World End Economica is out this month too for example.
I need to ditch my shitty Mac laptop for a Windows one so I can get back to playing all these.
Cannot wait for Zero Escape 3. Glad it’s coming out on both 3DS and Vita again too!
When I saw you talking about Zero Escape 3 I though it was a reference to Neg heading to the US
Page six arrived early for you!
@powalen and @alexpants are actually the same person, and his lie is becoming more difficult to maintain which is why “they” have moved in together.
Discuss.
This is why powalen gets all the best parts in the soap opera!! =O
Powalen is a self-insert fan fiction character?
Don’t be silly.
Per
Don’t be silly.
fect.
Okay, so do we amalgamate the names to PowPants or AlenAlex? 😀
PowPants sounds like one of those old 60s Batman sound effects.
*POW* *PANTS* *POWPANTS*
KAPOW!
Alex Alen sounds like his real name OH MY GOD WE’VE DISCOVERED HIS IDENTITY.
REAL NAME ALERT
REAL NAME ALERT
*Klaxons*
Powalex?
Ask your doctor if it’s right for you.
I wanna play more splatoon =(
And I’ve also injured my finger sewing. I’m a bit…accident prone?
I injured my finger playing Splatoon.
TMI TMI TMI
I managed to hurt my back and arm playing splatoon
Too hardcore for me 😛
That’s what happens when you play games sitting in weird positions!
Yo, anyone want to trade Anna’s Quest cards with me?
The only two cards I’ve got from the game so far are the same (The Pit) 🙁
I sold them. Got 60 cents. WOOOOO! 😛
But chalk emoticon!
I bought the GOG version. I dinnae get cards 🙁
Yep. I got doubles of…something. Can’t remember which. Give me a shout on Twitter tonight to remind me to check!
Oh, god… I’ve been playing too much Mechwarrior…
O_O
My crappy laptop cant run Annas Quest, some init error. And i have no idea how to fix it *cries*
I often find Steam communities for particular games helpful when you come across certain errors. Poke around the Anna’s Quest forums on Steam, you might find some info.
what happens when you try to run it? any errors? or just painfully slow?
When i go to load it it comes up with init error game files not found please chexk message.log which says to make sure have upto date drivers which ive done and ive deleted and reinstalled twice. I think its my laptop
if it’s a steam copy, have you verified the local content? perhaps chkdsk to see if any data is sitting on a bad sector?
Tried verifying last night also didnt work, need to look into it more tonight
TYRANO BUILDER
I expected dinosaurs 🙁 😛
How are you finding it?
It’s so easy to use. It’s gonna take a bit of work to make it all come together (because right now my ambitions are BIG), but I feel like I can do it.
I haven’t done any experimenting with sound yet, so I don’t know if audio tracks can be overlaid (I presume music and sfx, which have separate categories can be, but I don’t know whether voices and sfx can play simultaneously).
But I’m confident, and I feel like this could be a pretty great project.
They can be overlaid and you can even adjust the volume of each. Background music, sfx and even voice is all handled in the same section, so if doors are opening, you can use the same sound effect with ease.
I don’t know if you’ve checked out the expressions section yet. So you can set up expressions for each character and just link it, rather then constantly having to find it.
Yep, have done this! I’ve already rendered more than 20 expressions for the test character in the above image. Thanks for the info re: sounds.
No problem, as long as it helps.
Uuuuurgh sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t do the right thing and keep my manager up to date on what’s going on in terms of my depression… Being told that “sometimes I just want to pick you up, shake you, and tell you too get over it” is not a constructive way to get healthy thinking styles 😐Sorry for the downer start to the day but this happened yesterday and has been bugging me since, needed to get it off my chest…
…
Soooooooo, nice morning eh? 🙂
Started to play some terraria again last night because why the hell not… Runs on my laptop so I can be near my family while gaming and it’s so god damn addictive
Sorry to hear that, man.
Hopefully, even though it signifies a fundamental misunderstanding of depression, it was meant in a supporting way.
This, I get it a lot too, mainly “Come on, cheer up!” or “Just get over it man”.
I hope that’s not me. I know I like to try and send you stuff to make you smile, usually huskies or puppies or husky puppies.
No this is more at work, not you.
I’m glad ^^
Atleast you had a good laugh last night about the one handed drone with a mind of its own
the roll20 RPGs I’m in are a great way to cheer up temporarily with a good laugh
It so unfortunate that there’s still people out there who don’t get informed about depression and what it does to people. When I was going through it, I was lucky enough to have a manager who went through it himself and totally understood and was very supportive even suggesting that if I needed to, I could call him at any time.
Hopefully as time goes on and more and more awareness is raised around mental issues, workplaces will be more supportive and even have health programs that involve mental health issues.
Holy shitsnacks, that quote is like… textbook opposite of what a manager should be saying and in fact exactly the barrier that makes the whole problem so difficult in the first place.
The whole fucking point about depression is that you CAN’T ‘just get over it’. That’s what fucking defines it. Gah! At the very least maybe see if your workplace has an EAS (Employee Assistance Services or similar) contact you can talk to about getting some support that’s actually… y’know, supportive. Bloody hell.You probably feel like doing that too, but it is good to keep them updated. It’s hard for people without it to understand, so unfortunately, you have to be patient with them.
Are you sure your manager didn’t mean it in the ‘I get frustrated that I can’t help more’ sense? Like ‘I know it doesn’t work like this, but I get frustrated that I can’t do more and wish the solution was that simple’.
I work best with physical solutions so whenever the topic of someone’s mental health comes up I’m always left feeling like I’m letting the person down by not going in with a crowbar and solving the problem. I know depression isn’t something that’s ‘fixed’ like a broken pipe, but I read this and I want to just crack your head open, poke your brian until I figure out which part isn’t doing what you want it to, fix it and then put it all back together. I guess that’s sort of how therapy works, but my communication skills don’t match my nut and bolt skills so I’m useless there. =P
In my experience depression has always been one of those things that people who’ve gone through it will understand completely and those who’ve never experienced it or refused to accept they might’ve gone through it think it’s all made up poppy cock.
It’s a polarizing issue but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if you know the best way to treat it or not; if someone you know is going through it you just offer support. Period.
*sits down, drowsy from being called multiple times last night, slams head on desk and leaves it there*
…Morning…
Morning! *passes out*
How you feeling, Chris?
Better, I am at least at work today. But Quite zombie like.
At least I don’t have the killer headache from yesterday.
How late were the calls?
Well at least you’re recovering, that’s good to see.
The calls were at 12:30am and 5am, neither were really necessary so yeah, kinda grouchy and drowsy 😛
Ick, I hate those. those times are the worst too
I was in hospital under anaesthesia getting a surgical procedure done just over 12 hours ago and now I’m at work \o/
“I”
“hospital”
“surgical”
“procedure”
“work”
Urgh, that SUCKS. How are you feeling, man?
urgh yikes!
try and be relaxed, maybe get some herbal teas?
Good luck Mr
Elite work ethic!
Lol more like Freeze works for the only employer that has established slave labor in australia =p
Well, fingers crossed that you get some definite results out of it.
Two more trophies left on Payday 2. Only need two more heists on Overkill and that’s all of them for Overkill trophy – then comes Death Wish on all heists and platinum time bebbeh. I’m not much of a trophy/achievement hunter, but I enjoy platinum(ing)? games I sincerely enjoy.
My PSN account only has two platinums so far – Fallout 3 and Destiny. Would be nice to add Payday 2 to the list. Sunk a lot of hours into that game and gotten a great deal of enjoyment out of it.
Nice. I’ve platinumed Mass Effect 2, Saints Row The Third, and Borderlands one.
I was like one feather and one combat trick off platting Assassins Creed 2 as well
I like Platinum trophies. They’re not achievement whoring unless you want them to be. I see them more as a way to extend out a game you are really enjoying, extra challenges to pursue.
So far I have the Diablo 3, Dark Souls, Borderlands, Infamous Second Son and Dante’s Inferno (purely because there was one easy one left after I finished it and why not).
Nice. I actually really enjoyed Dante’s Inferno.
I did too. I have a soft spot for games that aren’t great but manage to be enjoyable in their way. Bound By Flame was another one I had a bunch of fun with.
Dante was an odd one. Was never much for God of War – but Dante really clicked for some reason. Played well, the sound was meaty as fuck – everything sounded chunky and brutal. Just really satisfying. Was visually awesome as well, really fit the source material quite well.
Haven’t played Bound by Flame – what I did hear was fairly positive.
@freezespreston When is this wrasslin thing kicking off? I still owe you a character sheet
Original plan was next week but I haven’t got a single sheet yet so I haven’t really been able to set anything up. So I guess two weeks after I get everyone’s?
I saw bits and pieces of that – would you mind linking me to details? I don’t think I will be able to participate but would still like to check it out.
Check your email.
If we say the 29th or so to kick off then? I’ll knuckle under and try get you something this week.
That sounds fine to me, I’ve set aside some time tonight to read everything and send through my character sheet.
Sorry, I haven’t had the time or mental energy to get myself in to another character’s headspace lately. It sounds interesting but I may just sit out and maybe watch a couple sessions and then tag in later on down the track.
No problem at all.
How intricate are the character sheets for it?
Did I send you one?
Ugh, nose is dripping like a tap again… 🙁
Bloodborne Update!
I beat the Blood-starved Beast last night on my 5th try. I’m pretty sure I was holding my breath for the last minute of the fight. Pants sitting next to me probably also holding his breath because now he has to buy me an ice-cream.
Then I figured I’d go back and try and fight the dude that showered me with bullets from the tall tower earlier in the area. Climbed all the way to the top while Pants was murmuring “You’re going to diiiiieeeeee”. Started fighting the dude. Then he just walked off the edge of the tower and died. I’ll take it.
Hah, I fought him off the tower too. Because fuck that guy.
I didn’t even know you could. He just kinda walked off by himself.
Pants was dissatisfied.
I ran at him and hit him a couple times with the shotgun so he staggered off.
You’re pretty close to where I’m up to atm, when I get back into it I’ll be working my way through the workshop before fighting Amelia
Everyone seemed to have him do that except me. Everytime I tried he just charged me and painted the walls with my intestines. Had to take him down later the old fashioned way.
My solution was to hop up there and immediately start shooting. Five bullets knocked him off the edge. There was no accident or fortune to his death, it was cold, calculated cheese.
Me too. Except I did it with three bullets #smugcheeseface
I think it was really four to knock him off, and another one just in case, though I’ll admit that the details are rather fuzzy.
I couldn’t even do that. He was always facing me coming up the ladder and while the animation of getting off the ladder was going he’d be up in my grill while I’m smashing the dodge button.
Yeah, I had to do that – the traditional way. (ie: Screaming, swearing, more screaming and endless rolling. So much rolling.)
Sounds like Katamari to me.
Also: The Threaded Cane is just the coolest weapon ever. I want more games set in this era so I can use canes as weapons more often.
Really liking the combat in Bloodborne. Much more than Dark Souls 1. I think it’s because I played similarly in Dark Souls 2 (sword in one hand, ranged in the other). In DS1 I had to use a shield which I didn’t like (still have to finish that one day…)
I’m having this weird indecisiveness for Shameless Gaming Month this year…
Do I try to finish Splatoon, Mechwarrior, or Carmageddon?
How long can Carmageddon seriously take? Might be a way to get runs on the board quick
Depends on if you’re trying to 100%. Some of those “Kill All Pedestrian” victories can take forever and become an annoying slog after a while.
If this is the remake, can’t guarantee that this is still a thing, but the original had a car that gave you a map of all pedestrians. Makes it waaay quicker.
I always preferred the car that had lightning as a default powerup (Electric Blue?) and then trying to find a pedestrian map on whatever level I was trying to do. That way you didn’t have to worry about directly hitting everybody and could just do a drive-by.
I plan to finish Far Cry 4, Persona 4 Golden, Project X Zone and possibly something else
You can’t finish splatoon. You just can’t.
Hey TAY, I don’t remember the last time I posted here.
Not much has changed. I got a tattoo, my house is cold. Im always at work. Ive been playing the Witcher for ages. Its so good man. I dont care what Fanboi hype says, I think its better then Fallout 4. But we’ll have to see.
Thats about it… Oh and its a year to the day since I came back from Asia
Wow. I remember your Asia posts like they were yesterday… how time flies. c.c
What tattoo did you get?
Its on my twitter. https://twitter.com/CJ_Svenson/status/613211819415441408
It’s now been a month since I sent my graphics card away for a warranty repair. From my perspective, this would be considered an “Unreasonable amount of time”. In line with the unbelievably shit wording of the law, this mean I can claim a refund.
What’s the bet I don’t get one, and they suddenly ship it back today?
If it’s ASUS, maybe they’ll ship it back still broken, like happened to me twice! 😀
“Card tests OK on games on our machines, it must be your PC.”
“It runs fine on SOME games on my machine, too, but isolation testing has proven it to be the card. Try WoW.”
“Huh. OK, we’re getting that now, too. Fine, we’ll send it away to ASUS.”
“How long?”
“Three to four weeks.”
“Yeah, that’s too long to be without a PC, can’t I just get a replacement?”
“They’re really expensive and not that common. How about a loaner?”
“Sure.”
*6 weeks later*
“OK, card’s back, there you go.”
“Yeah, it’s still broken. Did these guys even test it?”
“We gave them pretty clear notes, but I guess we’ll try again.”
“No, don’t try again, I’ve already been a month without a gaming card, I didn’t drop a couple thousand dollars to be running low-end; just get them to send a replacement.”
“Well, fair enough, we’ll get them to do that. But they’ll want to verify it before they’ll accept sending a replacement, though.”
“Fine.”
*8 weeks of dodged phone calls later*
“OK, here’s your replacement back.”
“THIS IS THE SAME FUCKING CARD AND IT’S STILL BROKEN IN THE SAME WAY. WHAT. THE. FUCK. Screw the manufacturer. I bought from YOU, so YOU replace this now or I’m onto fair trading.”
“Oh. Uhm. OK, we can’t actually source that model anymore, maybe that’s why they just replaced some parts of it… uh. How about this slightly new/different version?”
“Is it the same price or higher than what I paid for a card I haven’t been able to use for nearly half a year which depreciated in value by a few hundred bucks? Because if not, I want a REFUND, not a replacement, so I can buy something at equivalent cost.”
“Oh. Well. Yeah, we can do that, too.”
Wrote the warranty claim out like I used to back when I actually worked in warranty claims, including results from testing the graphics card with a different monitor, PSU and cables…and results from testing a different graphics card with the original monitor, PSU and cables with no fault found.
If they send it back broken I’ll be filing a formal complaint immediately.
I had a similar problem with a monitor from Acer
The problem with the ‘Unreasonable amount of time’ is that it is dependent on many factors, such as the product, the testing involved, shipping times and destination, etc. It also isn’t just defined by the consumer, if the company can justify the length of time it has taken, it doesn’t count. From previous experience doing RMA’s for the computer store I used to work at, a month isn’t really that long. From memory, 6 weeks was the norm, at least it’s not RAM..when we had to RMA the Corsair RAM with the lifetime warranty, we wouldn’t see it back for at least 6 months!
I know, I used to do RMAs too. I also used to argue with manufacturers all the time. If I was told it would take 6 months to replace any hardware for a customer I’d do it in store and bill the supplier, who would happily pass it on to the manufacturer.
The problem I came across was they would never admit it would take 6 months, there would just be multiple delays that kept pushing out the date.
But yes, we just used to replace the hardware and sort out the warranty ourselves/with the supplier.
Last time that happened to me I’d learnt my lesson. Graphics card was intermittently playing up when it hit certain temperatures – artifacts, the works. Card was fucked. But not totally fucked. So I just ensured it received a nice, big static charge and it was well and truly dead before I took it back. If it doesn’t work and isn’t physically or obviously damaged, they can’t do squat.
My local won’t RMA it if it doesn’t work in their test rig, they’ll just replace it outright if it’s completely dead – whereas if it’s intermittent, you’re subject to 4-8 weeks of no hardware, and 4-8 weeks of your warranty you don’t get back.
EDIT: I had issues with my Asus ROG laptop warranty as well. One time I sent it back, they took 6 weeks to fix it. Not happy.
EDIT EDIT: I love Asus gear though. Will always buy it as long as it’s as good as it’s been for me, but damn, their warranty service can be super-poo at times.
Based on personal experience, Asus support was only beaten by Samsung (computer) support in terms or sheer uselessness. Requesting weird steps as part of RMAs, backflipping on decisions, stalling etc.
You’ve all gone quiet today.
So what have you been reading?
I’m reading Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. Cool space opera thing so far but I get the impression that it’s still tablesetting 100 pages in
I’ve been reading TAY
Ree…ding?
(Actually, I joke, but I’ve been working my way through every comic Deadpool has appeared in on Marvel Unlimited.)
Re: Ding
We have not been able to replicate the specified Ding, however a beeping has been observed when the microwave completes a cooking cycle. Consider switching alert mechanism to a standardised format.
My supervisor and I have commenced a passive-aggressive campaign against those who leave their food in the office kitchen’s microwave then leave it there for ages, beeping every thirty fucking seconds. They now appropriately respond with guilt, but they still haven’t changed their goddamn behaviour yet.
Food not claimed within 90 seconds shall be consumed by the hungriest person. It’ll be a game. Of hunger.
I shall write a number of books about it, readily adaptable to movies. It shall serve as the inspiration to a generation of young’ish, relatively-well-off, white, male office nerds everywhere.
I volunteer as inspiration! It can be a tribute to my relatively-well-off, white, male office nerdiness.
Cable & Deadpool was good fun.
http://tinyurl.com/o2bobdc
Best.
Cable is my favouritest thing. WTB Ray Stevenson Cable movie. kgo.
I am continually guilt-ridden I don’t read much anymore. Used to be a book sponge until 5-10 years ago. Now struggle to find the enthusiasm or motivation to read, despite feeling wretchedly guilty that I don’t anymore.
I’m exactly the same, and I can’t figure out why. So many books I’d like to read and I just have no motivation to do so. Hell, I haven’t even attempted Game of Thrones despite my wife being most of the way through them…
I think there might be too many instant gratification distractions at my disposal. Games, movies, TV shows, etc. Require little real commitment and can be accessed in an instant. That and I think my attention span has… changed as I’ve gotten older. Not gotten better or worse, just different.
I know exactly what you mean here. I find I have too many tv shows, games and movies at my disposal and waste time deciding what to play/watch so end up reading instead. Also commute to and from work, and reading before bed to give my mind a chance to slow down so I can sleep is plenty of time to read.
Reading before bed would be a nice habit I’d like to get back into. Reducing screen time immediately prior to sleep would be beneficial for me, I think.
I have found getting to sleep a lot easier and I am less likely to wake during the night if I give myself an hour away from a screen before bed. Previously I was gaming until 10mins before I was trying to get to sleep (just enough time to brush teeth, go toilet, etc before bed), then it would take me 45mins to an hour to get to sleep, and I would make 5-6 times during the night.
I’d happily read if I could find anything new but whenever I go to bookstores all I can think is “I have no idea if this is going to be any good, I’m not going to spend $25 on it”.
It was so much easier when I was a kid and there were all these great books I hadn’t read yet.
Recently read Apollo Justice game.
Currently reading something that I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to talk about or not… how cryptic.
How to negotiate – a book from 1996 to try and help with my sales and talking skills
I read the latest tech news via a reader account every morning. Does that count?
A friend (big book reader, works at a book store) had covered a few tables in books to give away, so I picked up The Messenger (because The Book Thief was good enough for me to assume I’d like anything by Zusak, and it’s been on the list for ages) and Clariel (I have a soft spot for Nix, so I’ll probably enjoy it, despite reviews being relatively negative).
Based on my parenthesised words though, you’d be right to assume that I haven’t actually started reading either of these, since I think I’m in a bit of a book slump at the moment.
Still need to go back to The Lies of Locke Lamora, put that down two months ago and just haven’t gone back…
You need to go back to Locke Lamora, those books were fantastic! Can’t wait for the next one to be out!
Yeah, I was enjoying it, but ergh. Just not feeling books right now.
My optimum book situation is to spend a day with a tub of ice cream and a good book, and to just lose the world for as long as possible, and I haven’t been able to manage that lately.
Also, it fails the completely unreasonable and hugely biased bar that literally every book I’ve read in the past however long it’s been has failed to reach.
It’s good, but it’s no Mistborn.
Haha Mistborn was great.
I have a long commute to work, so I read to and from work on the train. As well as I find that I have trouble sleeping if I watch anything or play any video games an hour before I go to bed so I use that opportunity to read as well. That coupled with being a very fast reader, I go through several books a week! Also gives me a lot of ideas for my D&D campaign.
You need to get yourself out of that mindset though, or you won’t enjoy books for what they are! Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks is a good competitor for Mistborn though, as well as The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan.
Read The Messenger back in HS, found it a bit twee for my liking.
I am currently reading The Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker. One of those series where the first 3 books were available in a pack for $0.99. It is actually very good and I have enjoyed it immensely. Regrettably I am nearing the end of the 7th book and only have one to go after that. So will be finished probably by Thursday/Friday.
I recently read The Powder Mage trilogy by Brian McClellan and this was really good. I highly recommend it.
The World Wife Wrestling RPG rulebook.
Goddamnit autocorrect, why do you always change that to get me in trouble. I’m not changing it.
Wife wrestling? man, single dadding for two weeks has affected you more than we thought
Well, I am waiting on the new issue of Sex Criminals that’s out this week…
Great series
Going to start rereading American Gods soon. Haven’t read it in ages, so it’s high time I read it again, particularly with the tv series coming out soon.
Super happy that Bryan Fuller is running that series
A time of omens – Katherine Kerr
I find her books weird, I can get super engaged in the story and then it loses me when it goes grand scale but then the grand scale starts to mean something but then I’m into a microcosm again. I’m never sure how much I like them
I’ve had a copy of Palace by her sitting on my shelf for probably 7 years at this point.
As I’ve told the mate who foisted it on me, it’s not going to happen.
Well I will say that Palace is very very good. Mrs Tigs also really enjoyed it
The series I’m reading has reincarnation of souls and magically enhanced lifespans for some characters and it jumps back and forward in time and some characters referencing a character and relating to what they did 2 generations ago
Last few Terry Pratchett books.
Great as always but I’m gonna have to find more stuff to read soon, which is always a hassle.
Oh wait, I have a list. Time to add things to it.
So close to getting the Internet connected today…
So, there’s a new Anno game coming out in November… now I understand why 2070’s been about $8 the past week. And in one fell swoop takes care of my weekend plans for the final two months of 2015.
Those times when you couldn’t quite splash the $7 for something in the Steam sale, but then it pops up in a $2 bundle with some other decent odds and ends :3
for anyone else who’s been after a copy of Burnstar:
https://www.indiegala.com/monday
Max is eyeing off the sparrows, and meowing that she wants to go and chase them…
Apt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv2HrpWiSKM
I find it so creepy when my cat sits at the balcony door when there’s birds out there picking at our aloe vera pant, trying to mimic their chirping.
Starting to get back into FFT Curtain Call. I’d forgotten how much fun it is, and how much bullshit it will occasionally throw at you in terms of difficulty scale. It’s also starting to tempt me to pick up where I left off on my FFVII HD 100% run…which, if I remember correctly, required me to level every materia and character to max. Why do I feel like I should go back to that insane grind?
Because FFVII! 😀
Because they made the grind fun, something a lot of modern RPG’s seem to have forgotten about.
Biggest thing I miss is being able to use that grind to break the game and make yourself stupidly powerful but now they put restrictions on how much you can do it until you’re forced to do it for some arbitrary difficulty spike. Then it’s no fun.
This so much. If I want to grind for ages to trivialize the battles then fucking let me do it.
You can still do it via materia grinding, but yeah it has multiple adjustments for character grinding. Not really sure why they did that.
I can’t stand grinding in games anymore. I need some kind of substance to keep me going through it. It’s probably the reason I don’t play JRPG’s or MMOs (except for SWTOR) anymore.
This is something I really like in the Trails games. They’re set out so that the monsters in an area are a certain level range, and while you’re lower than that range you get tons of XP, but as you get above it it tapers off until you’re 2-3 levels ahead at which point they’re basically not offering any XP any more. If you get to that point always (usually just by exploring the areas thoroughly) you’ll be ready for the next boss. It seems like such a simple thing but it tells you when it’s time to move on and hardly anything is tuned as well. Older Tales games used to have that same really careful tuning too but the last few haven’t been as carefully done.
Theatrhythm is so E Z
*flexes rhythm muscles*
Also more non-humble bragging
https://twitter.com/JoelGreenius/status/524101887407054848
@negativezero 😉
Hahaha! I played that one for the first time yesterday during a quest. Got all crit but one…I died a little inside 😛
What about A, B, C and D?
Ok, finally alive again. Weekend was pretty good. Went up to Katoomba on Friday with some friends I haven’t seen in a while. We raided the candy shop there, I grabbed a bunch of cinnamon flavoured stuff just because it was there. Actually had the presence of mind to get some presents for people – found these tequila lollipops with a worm in them, figured my sister would like that so grabbed one. And there was this ginger and lime dark chocolate that sounded pretty good so that’d work as a bribe for the parents. Damn expensive though, but I tried some yesterday and yeah it’s pretty nice.
We had some boardgames to play, ended up running through Cluedo of all things though while it was a newer version than what we’ve got at home, it wasn’t the extremely new one that my sister’s friend brought around to play the other night which was weird and stupid. This one had a kind of “random death” mechanic, where the players would be killed off one by one if too many of a particular card was drawn which made it kind of interesting but at the same time it was highly exploitable since players were forced to draw those cards any time they were accused. Two of us got taken out by it (I was nearly the target but managed to talk my way out of it by making a point of the phrasing of the ability they were trying to use to do it :P), but in the end the game was ruined when someone went to guess the answer and only read the first letter of the room card, throwing them down excitedly only to realise the room they guessed wasn’t the room at all. Also then found out that some people had ruined the game already by announcing they had none of the suspected cards when in fact they did. Bah 😛
Actually, when we started my friend was saying how she ended up joining in with these “weird game playing people” not too long ago, and how they had like a whole wall full of all these board games and would meet up to play them all the time and I was just sitting there laughing at the description of this weird and strange world she’d gotten a glimpse into 😛 She was talking about the game they played, figured out it was 7 Wonders they played. Sounded like she was just as bewildered by it as I was when I played it with you guys the other month.
But, um. Yeah. So I had some sense of suspicion about this whole invitation dealie being a setup, and I was starting to feel I was correct when (as mentioned in weekend TAY) the next game was decided to be Truth Or Dare. And I was certain about it once I was dared to make out with the one other person there who wasn’t part of a couple. Though funnily enough it was by a person who wasn’t even aware of the secret plan. Later on when everyone had gone to bed, I asked the girl if the whole thing was in fact a setup, and had it confirmed. We ended up staying up all night talking >.>
Came back home Saturday, died due to lack of sleep. Woke to find messages from… hmm. I need some kind of a code name. Flute Girl? That’ll do. So I had some messages from Flute Girl and we ended up organising to hang out the next night. Then wound up staying up til it was time for Splatfest, so booted up Splatoon and started playing that for a while.
Sunday, I managed to work my way through to 50 Splatfest matches and got my XP to max, 37 wins to 13 losses *flex*. Then it was time to leave for… I guess it was a date? Had dinner at Grill’d, where I spent most of the time saying “what?” and getting everything repeated to me thanks to a speaker blasting music directly into my ear. Then we went up and saw Inside Out, which was pretty good. It’s been ages and ages since I’ve been to Miranda, it’s all weird and shiny and new. Also the car park is creepy, reading your number plate. I guess it went pretty well though. Since I got home at about 11 the next morning >.>
And then got to be dead again.
Worst. Hermit. Ever.
I even dressed up for the part and everything and it still didn’t help!
The hermit look is in! Everyone loves beards!
I dunno about you guys, but I think all this popcorn consumption is giving me acne
maybe you need salt free popcorn?
Every time you say you stayed up all night “talking” all I can think of is Scrubs.
Hopefully you let the poor girl finish a sentence or two, though.
Yeah Miranda has changed a lot. The number plate thing I didnt that was that new but maybe north shore was first area to get it.
Is that what kids are calling it these days? “talking”?
Oh, sorry. Um. Chatting? Discussing? 😛
*grabs popcorn*
@beardymcmuttonchops @beeawwb @cufcfan616 @dc @freezespreston @gutsoup @janexo @jimu @lambomann007 @popdart5 @sernobulus @strange @sughly @transientmind @welbot @virus__
http://www.ktm-hosting.com/thinkinc/events/an-evening-with-dr-neil-degrasse-tyson/
Who’s interested? I definitely am.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
Where do I sign up?!
I don’t know if this link will work but
http://wl.eventopia.co/event/An-Evening-with-DR-Neil-deGrasse-Tyson/290067?afflky=novacaneevents
$115-$170 for tickets or $350 for a meet and greet thrown in.
Too pricey for me
Oh man, yeah, thats too steep for me too. Sounds amazing though 🙁
Although if there’s a few going it might be worth throwing money into someone’s account and buying them all at once together.
Yeah, that seems pretty worthwhile.
I would LOVE to, but can’t justify the $$ myself 🙁
Having a brand spanking new office is amazing – clean, tidy, roof doesn’t leak, quiet, air-conditioning works, toilets flush properly, ceiling tiles are all in one piece…
Except for one thing…
My PC screen can now be seen by anyone who walks in and out of the only entrance to the office and my back is to the entrance.
Going to need Daredevil level hearing so I don’t get caught TAY-ing too much.
I TAY on my phone, got to keep my computer looking business-like.
I’m still working out how I can take naps on the bed without people noticing though.
You’re probably pale enough to pass as a corpse.
I work at a medical centre, not a morgue (plus I’m not that pale).
Wear one of those “I just gave blood” stickers. If anyone asks, you’re dizzy and someone told you to lie down.
They may get suspicious of this after you “donate blood” every day for a month, though.
You can get away with that as an excuse every two weeks.
Ugh, my finger won’t stop hurting. I think I stabbed it deeper then what I originally thought. Typing is kinda painful.
I’m taking a break from sewing, instead, I’m making and cutting sequins.
THIS ONE’S JUST TOO EASY, SCREE! :’D#PageR18+ #NoOneIsSafe
It would be funny if it wasn’t so painful =(
The First In A Series Of Fantastic Posts In Which Negs Describes The New Anime Season Shows So You Don’t Have To Watch Them.
July is upon us and that means new anime started last weekend. So many sequels this season! But there’s some new stuff mixed in there as well.
Charlotte
New show written by Key’s Jun Maeda, author of Angel Beats, Clannad etc. A lot of the Angel Beats staff are on this and it’s PA Works so it had a fair amount of interest going in. Main character has a superpower, allowing him to take control of the body of anyone he has line of sight with for five seconds. Being a devious shit, he uses this ability to hop between the bodies of all the smartest students in all his exams to cheat his way into a prestigious high school and try and hook up with a girl he’s interested in. Trouble is, he’s noticed in the process. It turns out he’s not the only one with strange abilities, and he finds himself strong-armed into transferring to another school to with the student council there, who all have similarly supernatural abilities. Overall I thought this was average, but I generally don’t like Maeda’s writing. Guy seems to always write about sarcastic loner assholes with deep family issues, to the point that I suspect that it’s at least partially self-inserted. Hopefully it’s more internally consistent than Angel Beats was. Going to give it a few more episodes to grow a plot before calling it.Classroom Crisis
This surprised me a bit. Set in the future, mankind has colonized many of the planets and moons of the solar system. The core cast are a special class at some kind of school on Mars. I’m not completely sure but I get the impression that their entire colony is owned and run by a corporation and the students are all employed as basically engineers in training. Trouble is, they’re wasting millions of dollars on their engineering, so a new transfer student is sent to the class to get things back on track. I liked this a fair bit. Brought to mind late 90s / early 00s science fiction anime like Twin Spica or Stellvia. Nowadays just about all the SF anime is either all dark and depressing robot stuff or near-future Earth stuff. This might be a regular for me if it stays decent.Gangsta
Gave me a strong Black Lagoon vibe. Darker-edged violent action anime about a pair of assassins that work for the highest bidder. One of them is your typical cool and collected guy, the other is a bit of a nutjob that likes to slice people up with a sword. The interesting twist is that the guy is nearly deaf, which is pretty uncommon in anime. Anyway, not sure where this is going to go but the first episode was pretty good. Definitely worth watching a bit more.Gate
This actually has a ridiculously long subtitle but let’s just call it ‘Gate’. The main character is a nerd who uses his job as an officer in the JSDF to support his hobby. While in Tokyo to attend a doujinshi convention, he is caught up in organizing the evacuation of the area after a magical gate from another world is opened in the center of the city and an invading fantasy army of knights, orcs and dragons came through. The invaders are quickly dispatched when the JSDF arrives – turns out that your dragon-rider might be rad, but against a modern helicopter gunship it’s going to come off second best. Incensed by the unprovoked attack on their citizens, the Japanese government creates a special task force and sends them through the gate to the other world to ensure they’ll never be attacked again. This one seems great. Remember playing Civilization and rolling over dudes that are still in Dark Ages tech with your mechanized infantry and tanks? That’s what this is like. Really enjoyed the first episode and this is straight onto my regular watch list.Okusama ga Seitokaichou
Short-form (8 minute episode) show that’s basically a dumb comedy with a side of smut. Main character is defeated in the student council elections by a girl who pledges to abolish the school rule about students not being romantically involved. Punctuates this by throwing out handfuls of free condoms. Then it turns out that the two of them are part of an arranged marriage and her parents are out of the country so she’s got to live with him. Stupid anime bullshit. Not going to watch any more.Ranpo Kitan
Mystery anime often doesn’t work, but when it does work, it works really well. I’m hoping this is one where it works. This show is (kind of loosely) adapting selected works of Edogawa Ranpo, a Japanese author from the early 20th Century who is considered the father of Japanese mystery novels. He created a long-running mystery series for teenagers starring a school-aged genius detective, Kogoro Akechi. This has a really interesting and slightly creepy presentation where characters are all blank silhouettes unless specifically introduced and stuff. The first story is an adaption of Edogawa’s ‘The Human Chair’. A boy wakes up in a classroom with a bloody hacksaw in his hand and the dismembered corpse of his homeroom teacher in one end, with the body parts arranged to resemble a chair. Seems very promising but will need a few episodes to see how it’s being handled overall.Rokka no Yuusha
Seems to be basically B-tier fantasy. Every few hundred years, a Demon King awakens and threatens the land. Six warriors are chosen by the goddess, branded with a mark of a flower, and tasked with fighting and defeating the demon king. The main character has trained from birth to fight it, and declares himself the ‘strongest man in the world’. Whether that’s actually the case remains to be seen. The world in this is atypical for fantasy stuff – it looks like pre-conquistador Mesoamerica. Depending on what they do with that it might be okay, but it felt very B-tier to me.Symphogear GX
Symphogear is fucking nuts. This is actually the third season, so if this sounds of any interest then you’d want to go back to the first. Basically if you want to thin-slice it, it’s a magical girl show. Except it has constant action and things are exploding and everyone is always singing and it’s all stylish and hot-blooded like Gurren Lagann or something. At one point in this episode they’re trying to stop a space shuttle from crashing and it’s on a collision course with K2 so naturally they have Hibiki stand on the front of the shuttle and punch the mountain to bounce the shuttle back the opposite way and this basically annihilates a slice of it and they’re all “guess it’s the third-highest mountain now!”. It’s not a great series if you examine each part. The writing’s average, animation’s a bit ugly, Aoi Yuuki is a fantastic actress but she can’t sing, and so on. But the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. Guaranteed to be a regular watch for me.Shimoseka / Shimoneta / ‘A Boring World Where The Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist’
I feel like the biggest issue this comedy series is going to have is that there’s a fair bit of cultural and language nuance that’s lost in translation. Basically the setting is near-future Japan. Government censorship has cracked down to the point that pornography is contraband even saying naughty words will set off an alarm on your mandatory collar or wristband, calling in the public morality cops to take you away. The main character transfers from a school considered to be one of the most morally corrupt in the country into an elite school so pure that the student body apparently have absolutely no idea that sex is even a thing. On his way to his first day, a series of events results in him encountering a ‘terrorist’, blue snow, a crazy girl who wears panties on her head to hide her face and shouts rude words everywhere. It turns out she’s the vice president of the school council and wants his help to overthrow the current oppressive regime, because a world where you can’t say dirty words is boring.The big issue it has is that a lot of the jokes are language puns. Also a lot of them are censored – I’m not sure if it’s a deliberate stylistic choice or if these are actually words which are considered unfit for broadcast on Japanese TV (which would be amusing if it were the case). Because the jokes don’t translate that well and we’re not coming from a particularly sexually repressed culture (despite perception to the contrary, Japan is almost puritan in a lot of ways) it doesn’t really work that well in English. The premise is a bit too far fetched and the comedic timing is just not there. If you want to watch an anime which is basically just a long string of perverse innuendo then watch Seitokai Yakuindomo, it’s a better show. Probably won’t watch more of this.
Ushio to Tora
This is actually an adaption of a really old manga from the early 90s. Going to run 39 episodes so presumably they’re adapting all of it. Violent kid Ushio’s family are the caretakers for an ancient shrine. Ushio’s father is always going on about a monster that their ancestor sealed away with a holy spear, but he doesn’t believe it until after his Dad goes away on a trip. While clearing out the old storehouse he discovers that there’s a sealed basement. Unsealing it, he encounters Tora, a giant tiger-like Monster that’s pinned to the wall with a spear. Unwilling to free the creature, he leaves it in the basement, but with the doors broken Tora’s evil aura begins to seep out, attracting many small youkai which start attacking Ushio’s love interest. He unseals Tora by removing the spear and in so doing reveals that he can control it, just like his ancestor from five hundred years before that had sealed Tora away in the first place. This basically scares Tora into submission and the two work together to take out the Yokai in the area. I’m not completely sold on this yet. It’s animated well – MAPPA are former Madhouse animators – but the story didn’t grab me hugely yet. Going to give it a few episodes though, since shounen stuff like this often take a few episodes to hit their stride.Wakaba Girl
Another 8-minute show. This is about a cute but airheaded girl who… goes to school. With her friends. And they chat a bit. So it’s a show about cute girls being cute. Pass.Working!!!
Season 3 of one of the better comedy series of the last few years. Working (or Wagnaria in the US for some reason) is about the daily lives of a bunch of weirdos who work at a family restaurant. At this point the cast’s grown fairly big but the jokes all still work. Technically the central character is Takanashi, who is a strange guy who has a thing for stuff that’s small and cute, presumably because of childhood trauma growing up with a bunch of sisters who are all giants – his 12-year-old younger sister is taller than he is. He’s initially approached to work at the place as a waiter by an upperclassman at his high school, Popura (i.e. ‘poplar’ as in the tree) who despite being several years older is extremely short and has a complex about her height. Among the other characters is Mahiru, a waitress who has an extremely violent fear of men, usually resulting in her randomly punching Takanashi in the face, and Yachiyo, a complete airhead who used to be part of a delinquent gang and carries around a katana but is completely infatuated with Kyoko, the manager of the store who does nothing but wander around and eat parfaits. The two chefs are a chain-smoking taciturn dude who has a secret crush on Yachiyo, and a guy who basically knows everyone’s secrets and acts as a constant shit-stirrer because it amuses him.The store’s owner is Otou-san (a pun, means ‘father’) who is rarely around because he’s busy searching for his wife, who has such a terrible sense of direction that she went out one day several years before and never returned. This is the source of a lot of comedy. Finally there’s Yamada, a girl who is obsessed with soap operas and after watching one decided to run away from home and attempt to convince Otou-san to adopt her. She lives in the store’s attic. Basically each episode is a series of comedic vignettes. It’s fairly brilliant, almost like an anime take on The Office if it were a bit more ridiculous and set in a restaurant. Already knew this would be a must-watch going in.I loved the first and second season of Working! Definitely need to watch this too.
Did you ever watch the other one adapted from a manga by the same author? Servant x Service, about a bunch of public-sector workers working for the government in a small town in Hokkaido.
Yes! I had no idea it was by the same people! That explains a lot.
I didn’t get quite the same chortles out of Servant x Service, but it was still pretty good. For all the similarities I noticed in government work, the contrasts in culture are… striking. It really is a different world.
Yeah, it’s not as funny. I think partially because the cast aren’t as perfectly weird.
So Working!!! is a japanified Waiting…?
… maybe? A bit similar I guess?
Yeah, I had a pretty good oldschool vibe from Classroom Crisis, too. I’m… wary, though. Asshole for the sake of being an asshole looks like he might be an unfortunate focus for the show, whereas I would totally watch the rest of that crew goofing off on their own. For realsies, set the show a couple years earlier and I’m in.
I’m also really looking forward to Gate.
It’s not gone crazy absurd (yet – and yes, all things are relative; versimilitude, people) with the whole ‘what if orcs and dragons invaded Earth today’ temptation to let super-powered badass magical girls do all the killing of tanks and soldiers and commence the end of humanity in Tokyo. It really does go about like what you’d expect it to… minus predator drones for some reason. Can’t let the humans have too much of an edge, I guess? Seems like that army-slaying magical girl shit might still be on the cards, though. But all the same… there’s lots of resisted tropes there. Gives me hope it’ll stay even-handed and steady. I’m getting an ‘ensemble cast’ vibe from the intro/outro, really hoping for something almost Patlabor-Lite’ish.
Working!!! is a no-brainer. Expecting this to be worthwhile every week.
Same conclusions as you about Okusama ga Seitokaichou (tripe) and Wakaba Girl (yawn). Haven’t seen any of the others yet.
I bet that they’ll melt the asshole manager’s heart with their antics and remind him there’s more to life than profit margins.
From what I’ve been told about Gate, a lot of it is a culture battle. Because they’re not just more advanced in weapons of war, they bring education and modern medicine and everything. The world over there is run like the Roman Empire and basically I think the protagonist turns out to be amazingly well equipped mentally to deal with everyone there because it’s a stereotypical fantasy world and he’s a huge nerd.
One of the best things about Gate actually was the bits around Tokyo. The attack happens in Ginza and the protagonist is heading to Comiket at the Big Sight in Odaiba, and to get there you need to stop at Shinbashi station and take the Yurikamome monorail. That was all right by the hotel we stayed in Tokyo so it looked incredibly familiar. Like “I know where those stairs are” familiar.
EDIT: About the only reason to watch Okusama ga Seitokaichou is if you were really, really desperate for some anime boobs. Especially since the token boobs show this season (Toloveru Darkness’ 2nd season) is apparently full of our friends Foggy, Mr Light Bar and Black Misty.
I love that about having been to Japan.
All these scenes in anime where I’m now familiar with where/what it is depicting or what inspired it.
Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. Especially since a lot of modern stuff they use photographs for references when doing the backgrounds.
Yeah, I paused some the other night during just a pretty standard establishing shot to marvel at how much it looked like some of the streets I walked down in Kyoto.
Hibike! Euphonium had a whole bunch of Kyoto shots that were pretty memorable.
Oh and Japan weirdly enough doesn’t seem to have invested in drones for combat. You’d think they’d be all over it since it’s some Ghost in the Shell type shit but they only seem to use UAVs for recon and as targets. I’m sure if they wanted them they could get Predators / Reapers from the US but it’s not something they’ve done.
Man, Gate has the potential to be so damn good. A rather underexplored but satisfying story of a modern army taking on the armies of a fantasy world; there’s also a fair amount of politics and world building. I remain wary, though, the main character is refreshing but the show makes his passion for his hobby a bit too stereotypical, when in other mediums it’s meant to play him off more as a everyman. Makes me think some subtlety will be lost for adaptions sake.
Yeah, I’ve been told they seemed to dial the otaku up a fair bit compared to the manga.
First episode of GATE seemed a bit average to me, but the premise is interesting enough that I’ll keep watching.
Oh shit! I didn’t realise they werr making a Gangsta anime! Love the manga, Nick and Worick just work well and love the setting. Will have to watch the anime now
Ever wanted to play Kantai Collection but that silly lottery system they have for getting an account put you off? Well, as of the server upgrades they completed last week, the lottery is gone!
Seriously though, don’t play it. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
I’d need to know Japanese to play it, right? I’m safe.
It’s pretty playable without Japanese knowledge. There’s a wiki to help:
http://kancolle.wikia.com
Also you can use a viewer like KCV3 which runs the game in a window and then adds some extra stuff around the edges to track some unsurfaced data, translate the names of things and so on.
…nooo
Make sure you pick Murakumo or Fubuki as your starter. Samidare is arguably the best stats-wise and right now Sazanami has special art, but Fubuki and Murakumo have the best long-term value right now due to having high-level upgrades.
…
…nooo
Going down the New Vegas mods rabbit hole was bad enough!
I might just read up a little is all.
Aaaannnddd it was nice knowing you.
*distance yelling from me in said New Vegas Mod rabbit hole*
Don’t listen to the heathens! ENBs aren’t worth it!
Did you actually end up doing it?
I can provide some tips if you did…
I have read some wiki. There is an awful lot of japanese on those screenshots.
It’s helpfully discouraging! 😀
@transientmind: There’s not really a lot to it though. I don’t know what most of the things say (though I’ve gotten to the point I can read the ship names most of the time, though a few still trip me up) I just know what buttons to click and use the wiki for anything specific eg figuring out requirements for quests & expeditions.
There’s no story or anything, but the girls have lines responding to different things. I do understand a fair bit of spoken Japanese though so I understand most of the vocal bits and that likely helps.
@freezespreston @redartifice
Gentleman, I can’t seem to find my Wrasslin’ RPG rule book/documents, I read them last week but can’t find them tonight! Would either of you two fine gentleman please forward it to me?
n_s_mclean@hotmail.com😀Done.
Got it! Cheers!
😉
such a stalker, Stewie
Highperformance is totally worth stalking. Just sayin’.
Might wana spoiler your e-mail high, or break it up so it doesn’t come across as a link.
Thank you!
Put the finishing touches on the chook pen this arvo, but the rest of today can go die in a fire.
Oh wow, I just tried some of the Mexican stone-ground chilli chocolate I picked up in Leura. It’s got such a weird texture, it’s really crumbly once you start to chew it. So good though.
Need to get some more. Also the coffee and cinnamon ones.
I think the name is actually spelled as “Laura”, you player, you.
Chocolate and Chilli are a match made in heaven. There’s a place near my parents that makes an Aztec Chilli Hot Chocolate that is to die for. Best hot chocolate ever. Also coffee and cinnamon go pretty well with chocolate too.
Things you dont want to hear on a work call at 7am “bathroom..asbestos..apprentice..rotary hammer” so thats gonna be a shit of a morning.
In other news I played Annas Quest last night after finally getting it working…SOOO GOOOD played for nearly 6 hours straight
Last night I gave my email address out over the Internet.
@liondrive is the reaason why you should never do so: http://i.imgur.com/G24PHop.png <-NSFW
The good news is that now you know his email address, so you can send him pictures of things that resemble vaginae as vengeance.
I should have thought this through more… 😐
Bwahahahahah
Hahaha bloody hell.
Keep your pants *on*, @liondrive.
I don’t think he had them on to start with.
I doubt he wears them anymore 😛
Nevermind; my warning came a little too late =P
Hahahahahahahahahaha! 😀
I couldn’t resist! :’D
I thought I’d share some of the adventures of Gerald of Rivia with you guys.
He’s Geralt’s retarded brother that somehow was shipped as the main player character on my copy of the witcher 3.
This is what happens when I give him instructions
“Gerald, go look at that book by that ledge”
– walks straight off cliff.
“Damn it Gerald!”
“Gerald, pick loot that crate.”
– Ignites candle.
“Gerald, I said loot that crate!”
– extinguishes candle.
“Gerald, Please loot that crate.”
– ignites candle.
“Gerald, step slightly over this way and try looting that crate.”
– What crate? there is no lootable crate.
“fine, walk over this way and try looting that crate.”
– Extinguishes candle
“Damn it Gerald!”
Practicaly every time I’m in combat against more then one opponent I have
thisto say.
“Nice work on the counter Gerald. Quick now that’ he’s open finish him off with a heavy attack!”
– takes wild air swing at guy number two who’s across the other side of the room.
“Damn it! Oh well, may as well hill him now we are over here, try a quick attack at guy two.”
– takes an air swing at guy one back over the other side of the room, gets hit in the back of the head by guy two.
“Damn it Gerald!”
“OK Gerald, we’re all done in this area, time to find out horse and leave. Mount Roach.”
– Ignites campfire .
“I said mount Roach.”
– Extinguishes camp fire.
“WE ARE NOT DOING THIS AGAIN. walk over here, call Roach.”
– Roach runs into ocean.
“Damn it Roach!”
Sounds like fun.
Oh god, Now Gerald is seeing things.
I went up and told him to talk to someone who the map indicated was a merchant. Turns out he’s not a merchant. He’s just a guy standing around. Gerald is talking to a “merchant” who is standing next to the guy but is on there when Gerald is apparently talking to him. I asked to look at his wares but I never get to see any. Clearly there aren’t any wares because there is no merchant. Maybe It’s Gerald’s imaginary friend all grown up and and with a job.
Is this a guy in a small encampment right next to a bridge to a fortified island?
I think that’s the one
It’s time for another instalment of… *SPAM EMAIL TIME*
I *do* remember about that guy. He was good guy.
Woke up at 6am.
Felt like shit, went back to sleep.
It’s now 10am and I woke up 30 minutes ago.
Fuck.
Leisurely week at work thus far. Been tasked with testing various Linux distributions on VMs for compatibility with our software. End result, kicking back in my chair with my headphones listening to KMFDM at unhealthy volumes while no one bothers me and I don’t have to answer the phones. Livin’ the dream, man.
Swap jobs for a week?
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/07/08/important-not-overestimate-security-threat-turnbull
I don’t like Malcolm Turnbull. But he isn’t an idiot and I can respect him at the least. We’d be in a very different and much better place if he wasn’t ousted by the crazier faction, at least I’d like to believe so.
See, I used to have a lot of respect for Turnbull.
But he squandered all of that when he became just another lackey for Abbott on so many issues. Even when he comes out with sensible things, it’s too little too late.
He’s kinda stuck in his current position. Turnbull’s sort of popular and respected by the public but some in his party hate his absolute guts for not being a blind and obedient party member. Also the fact that the LNP has swung hugely to the right while Turnbull has stayed pretty central-right throughout the years hasn’t helped him at all. He has to be a lackey for Abbott so that he has a chance of becoming leader when Abbott gets ousted. It’s a stupid popularity game that he has to play.
I’m in the same boat but I love that he’s been making barely veiled swipes at the party for some of the stupid policy decisions and moronic rhetoric pouring out the mouths of some of the leadership.
Too little too late right now, but I’m inclined to give him a second shot if he gets a clear run and has some decent policies I can get behind.
He’s a smarmy arsehole.
But he’s a smart smarmy arsehole.
He’s a bit of a prick but I think he’d actually be an okay PM. Vastly better than Abbott and most of the other cabinet members. Biggest issue with him I have is the level of compromise on his principles he seems willing to make. Hard to tell where he actually stands personally because he’s got to tow the party line a lot.
So after all my whining on Monday about a glitch in Watch_Dogs I went back to it and guess what – when you quit mid-mission you DO get a checkpoint. So instead of having to do the whole mission again, having already done it three times and butting my head against the glitch each time, I returned to my game to find myself standing outside the poker game, and this time it actually allowed me to start the game… of course then it was interrupted for an on-foot chase sequence but this one was actually kind of fun.
So I got a few more missions into the game, as well as finishing a bunch of side content. Unlocked achievements for preventing crimes, unlocking all the ctOS towers and completing all of the privacy intrusions. \o/
The side content is what I really liked in the game. I think a lot of the reason for this is you can do a lot of it playing as the character Aiden should have been, rather than the main mission stuff where you’re handed an LMG and kill several hundred people.
Also, the intrusion stuff is great.
I remember when I first started I tried to hack a ctOS tower but I just couldn’t figure out how to get to it and assumed “well this is something I’ll probably unlock later” and did a few story missions before taking an extended break from the game. It wasn’t until I tried a different tower that I saw a locked gate and realised “oh shit, there’s a line leading over that way, maybe I can hack this camera for a better angle…” and then realised what a fucking bonehead I was.
I don’t want to get too mired in the side content since I’m still only mid-way through Act II…
I’ve just unlocked the Bunker and done one or two missions after that that’s allowed me to access some “off the grid” location, which I now have to return to the bunker for the next mission… but the mysteries of the weapons trade, serial killer, ctOS breaches, etc are all pretty intriguing so far.Unlocking towers (hi Ubisoft!), reading peoples’ emails, trying to stealth shit until you inevitably gun everyone down, and the spidertank and creepy bodysnatcher-world side-thingies were the most fun for me in Watch_Dogs. Everything else… meh.
I really thought the protagonist would resonate with me, but newp. Not one bit. He’s a total jackhole.
(Edit: Yes, the implication is that I’m not. Help me out, here.)
Oh I did the Spider Tank “digital trip” and that was a blast. Only made it to the 21st of 24 objective though, gonna have to get it together and try it again. My main downfall was that after a certain point helicopters stay up very high and I can’t get an angle to hit them without climbing buildings. I got hit with an objective to kill 30 police and got too distracted chasing choppers.
@shane I got in contact with Seon who is the founder of Nyu media who localised Tyrano builder, and told him about you using it for your own visual novel. He will contact you over the next few days in case you need any help with the program. Sorry for sticking my nose in, I just want to help.
Best kind of meddling.
I will wait until Shane responds before I feel relaxed.
Hi [insert customer name],
I’m afraid shane is currently away on urgent zombie apocalypse research and is unable to respond to your query for the time being. He will get back to you as soon as he returns and requests all his customers/fans please continue relaxing until further advised.
Kind Regards,
[generic phone/e-mail messaging service]
Thanks @scree! I appreciate that – Seon got in touch this morning, and is happy to be on call for any questions I might have. Thanks.
I just hope it helps.
Applying for another job at Allure. I’m sure that they’re just going to keep advertising roles further and further down the totem pole until they eventually post something that I can do :p
Oh hai page 4.
I’m considering that one. I think I could do it, and quite well, but it’s stacking it up against my current job that’s the conflict for me.
There are a few jobs posted, I’m going for the Editorial Assistant. There’s also an analyst position and a sales one. They’re all full time in Sydney. That’s still the biggest hurdle for any of the roles. Damned Sydney bias.
Well on the upside moving back to Sydney is a possibility for you, should you be successful.
So who was the successful journalist app, a TAYbie or someone else? I think Shiggy was going for it too, but I’ve been out of the loop a few days.
We don’t know who got the journalist job, yet. I know it’s not me.
I’d be looking at the editorial one.
It looks like porridge making is one of the required skills.
I’ve been using Serrel’s Secret* Recipe for weeks! I’m in!
*Totally not a secret, he posts it everywhere and at every opportunity.
I saw that and was thinking of applying, then it asked for two copies of your work and I remembered I have no journalism skills whatsoever and gave up
Awesome opportunity to join a lively video game focused culture and be part of a fantastic team with career progression a possibility! Position: Cleaner. Apply now!
I’m expecting them to advertise for an office gopher next week.
I’m expecting a position of office porridge maker to be announced.
That’s the week after.
Mark does need a new foot stool…
Being a footstool is one thing, I could do that, but being a foostool in Sydney? I have some pride.
And now Max is fast asleep on my bed…
Yay work!
“Yeah, it errored because you added that column. There’s only one field there, not two, and it’s ‘has children’, not ‘has child’.”
“But there was only one child; children is plural.”
“True, but unfortunately it’s programming, not English. Maybe one day the system will incorporate more advanced heuristics but for now, syntax matters.”
“I don’t know those words.”
“Well, heuristics is…”
“I really don’t want to know new words.”
“Fair’nuff. That’s how the database feels about ‘has child’.”
. o O (Just fill in the damn template and stop breaking things.)
(Edit: Also, who doesn’t want to know new words?! I will never understand humans.)
tl;dr stop fucking with the programming and enter the damn data.
It’s a one-to-many relationship, not one-to-one. If it always had at most one child, then ‘has child’ would make sense. But because it may have anywhere from zero to effectively infinite children, you have to ask it if it has children, not if it has a child.
I will post progress on @tech_knight chassis upgrade to pulsefire Ezreal later, if it’s alright with Techie
@tech_knight for permission
Go for it!
@shane I doubt it’d have stuff you need/want, but I think it’s wonderfully coincidental that the new Humble Bundle is full of game making stuff
https://www.humblebundle.com/
I need game character hub as I always hate my own artwork.
Oh shiiiiiiiit, this is awesome. Gonna get all the content!
(Seriously, I needed sfx and audio, so this is a great place to start)
Thanks!
Whew, what a night. Nightfalls, a 32 and a 34 prison, and finishing with a (semi-sherpa-ing) Vault run on normal. Gotta say, playing Vault of Glass with three people who haven’t done it before (or have, but never had the chance to learn how the encounters work) was amazing – it reminded me just why I loved VoG back pre-Dark Below. That said, playing it with the new strategies was a bit of a downer…
Confluxes was fun – it was actually my first chance to use Fatebringer in the Vault since I got it – goblins were exploding all over the place! 😀 We wiped on the oracles once, before using the top platform sniping strategy, which I’m not a fan of (I might be misremembering, but I swear the hidden right oracle is about three metres away from where it should be – it used to be completely out of view from the top platform… hence “hidden” right), but I got to run around down there and handle the hidden left oracle while trying not to die, which was a blast (and, hey, now I know where the hidey hole is for Oracles… though I found it after we finished that phase). Templar, who I consider to be the toughest boss in the Vault (at least as a level 25), is a pushover when everyone’s sniping him from the top platform… as level 33+ using 331 snipers or 365 Ice Breakers… but I guess running relic on that encounter can still be pretty fun. 🙂Gorgon’s Labyrinth was hilarious, thanks to my screw up – I was nominated to lead the way through, and misjudged where I was at the last bend, walking straight into a Gorgon (thankfully, with everyone at 33+, we took it down without much effort, then made a mad dash to the exit). The jumping puzzle was amazing, as expected – it took a little while, but it’s always fun to watch as people learn. 😀Gatekeeper’s went amazingly smoothly – we took both relics simultaneously, and it was over in a few minutes… we probably did it too quickly, tbh, as I don’t think the new guys had time to understand what was going on, which kinda screwed us when it came to Atheon. What makes Atheon so amazing is that it’s a combination of nearly every mechanic in the Vault thus far, plus a couple new ones; but because the strategies we used and the speed we progressed bypassed the “learning” stages of some of the more troublesome mechanics, trying to learn them at Atheon was a bit of information overload for our new guys, so we didn’t manage to beat him.Thanks for the invite, @trikeabout – you’ve reminded me why I love this game, and how much I wish I could go through VoG with fresh eyes once more. 😀
D’awww. Early runs and learning sure were a blast. I do miss that.
Was a lot of fun! Great night. Need to run a couple more nightfalls tonight.
Plus… I HAVE GJALLAJALLLAJAJAHORN!!
Or yes – the first stage of grabbing the relics in the actual Vault… I was AFK for 3 minutes, came back and you were done with 2 experienced 2 inexperienced and 1 virgin. WTF! 🙂
A Wednesday afternoon game. Give me an improbable but possible future headline:
Trade Talks Resume As Prime Minister Clive Palmer And President Donald Trump Find Common Ground.
Abbott Government Passes Gay Marriage Bill
Warner Brothers Interactive announce free DLC a month after newest game release.
“…In Apology For Latest Launch Shambles.”
‘Greece to generate billions by copyrighting democracy.’
Dawn Fraser Was Totally Joking
AlexPants Wins Lottery, Batman’s Affections.
*Batman voice*
YOU’RE THE BEST ALEX, THE BEST
yaaaaaay
I guess you could say it was his Afflecktions.
The thing about this that bothers me the most is that I’m not actually sure that Clive would be worse than Abbott is.
“Government Warns Australians Not To Travel In ‘Dangerous’ US.”
“Shots fired in more than American streets; Smarttraveller.gov.au lists the US as a ‘do not travel’, placing it in the esteemed company of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop, stated,”[the website] operates with only the concerns for the safety of Australians measured against an impartial criteria. I stand by these decisions which are based on current events and statistics – not treaties and diplomatic relations.””
“Today’s New Massacre: 42 Wounded, 11 Dead. Press Can’t Tell Which ‘Bloody Wednesday’ Is Which, All Other Day Of Week The Same. America Admits It Has A Problem: Amends Constitution.”
“Congress came together today for an historic, bi-partisan revision of the constitution, in light of the increasing and worrying trend of mass shootings. Both sides of politics have agreed to remove the time-honored but controversial 1st amendment in order to better protect the public against whichever form of popular media the powerful gun lobby determines is responsible for any new incidents of gun violence. The first target in the NRA’s firing line is the video game industry, which has long programmed American youth with glorification of mass killings. A rash of new bills have been proposed in response to the historic constitutional re-amendment with sorely-needed updates to national security-related acts.”
‘I paid the boat people’
….but I don’t pay the ferryman, until I get to the other side
King Charles Reinstates Full Monarchy
King Charles declares American Declaration of Independence illegal. War declared.
Luckily there will never be a King Charles because the Queen actually died around thirty years ago and then was brought back to life as a lich, and thus will never relinquish her throne on account of the fact she is now immortal.
How could she die when lizard people are immortal to start with?
Surely at this point she’s hoping to outlive Charles so the throne will pass directly to William, yeah?
But if she’s dead, isn’t the throne up for grabs? I don’t think the undead are allowed to hold office…
That’s what you’d *like* to think, wouldn’t you.
Any challenger to the throne will have to defeat her in a wizard duel.
So the next king will most likely be a Paladin or a Cleric
Or a plucky young band of heroes who splinter once they realize that while they make effective slayers of the undead, a warrior doesn’t necessarily have what it takes to rule.
They’ll divide the evil undead god-queen’s body parts up into bits and store each in a jar and many years later the contingency plan will activate and a bunch of clones will attempt to reassemble the parts and resurrect her so she can regain the throne once again ensure the sun never sets on her empire.
@negativezero
They gotta scatter and hide the pieces on four edges of the globe first
& @negativezero & @tech_knight
*scribbles notes* Don’t mind me. 😛
@popdart5
“The next session takes place fifteen years later. Send me your character sheets and let me know what your character intended to do for the rest of their life, now that they’re wealthy, famous, and influential. I’ll let you know what they actually ended up doing and how it affected their stats. Advance warning: It will not have gone as great as you hope.”
Nah that’s when I get new characters along for the trip and have the players confront their old characters. 😛
oooooh
I still haven’t finished watching Chaika after its first-season break. Pretty good show, though.
Back half of it was a bit disappointing honestly. 🙁
Pirates turn to VPN services in wake of illegal file sharing website takedowns.
It’s meant to be ‘improbable’, Benny!
Kimye name second baby ‘South’.
“IMPROBABLE!”
😛
“Michael Bay announces plans for new movie trilogy based on the complete works of William Shakespeare”
Is it wrong that I would watch the shit out of Bayspeare?
That’s where I get it from impossible to improbable. Because as unlikely as it would be, holy CRAP I would watch that.
What explosion rips through yonder window?
Is this a rocket launcher I see before me?
Joe Hockey Succeeds in Fulfilling Promise of Lowering Deficit
Rupert Murdoch dead at 85.
Also impossible, as Murdoch is also a malevolent undead lich. See above.
Australia Struck with Bizarre Popcorn Shortage
Go for it! Make us proud.
Alex Finds Pants
Sorry for posting a lot, but I want to ask a question. The bookmarks may make good shirts so I considered putting them up on redbubble, but I find that red bubble’s shirt quality isn’t that great. Threadless now have something similar starting up
https://www.threadless.com/artist-shops/reserve/?utm_source=Threadless+Newsletter&utm_campaign=2dbb7b73a1-Artist_Shop_Survey&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0ec0d99312-2dbb7b73a1-267494953&goal=0_0ec0d99312-2dbb7b73a1-267494953&mc_cid=2dbb7b73a1&mc_eid=097373a43a
I’m considering maybe making shirts, prints and phone covers. I would probably make a separate store that I would handle for bookmarks and other prints. What do people think?
Getting on Threadless is a pretty big audience exposure. More so than redbubble.
I’d pay close attention to what the deal is with licences as you move forward though.
You can only reserve a place atm, but there is not much more info
I mean in terms of licencing of pop-cultural things. I know Threadless had a Muppets licence, but I dunno if they had a Pokeymans one.
I’ve seen pop culture stuff on there before, but I get what you mean. I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything to be completely honest
I think it depends on how close it is to the original. They’d have a legal team watching it all very closely.
Well, considering I have been redrawing it so it’s kind of in a different position, but I dunno.
I’ve bought a bunch of stuff from them, including some (very obviously) Pokemon stuff. No idea how the licencing works for it, though.
What’s the quality like?
The worst I could give is one of the shirts which would be “Good”, but most of the stuff I’ve gotten from there has been fantastic.
I have no idea what to do anymore
I’ve been buying Threadless for the last … 7 years? … and in that time the quality has rapidly gone downhill as they’ve expanded in popularity. I can compare the first shirt I bought to the last shirt I bought, and the difference is marked. In the first, the cotton is thick, soft, and the print is good quality. The last shirt I bought is so threadbare as to be almost see-through (it really IS threadless) and the print quality just seems ‘average’ at best.
I know they use different manufacturers and suppliers for various base colours and so on, but I’d be very wary at this point in time. If they’re going to be doing mass self-print models, I would suspect they’ll be using the cheapest price points possible from there end.
Have you seen a redbubble shirt? The colours sometimes muddy so I’m wary about adding more shirts.
I bought one shirt from Red Bubble because Doc What? went to the trouble of making a design I suggested. Between the price and shipping I think I paid $42 for one t-shirt and I thought the shirt itself was pretty sub-par, though the print was ok. That was a couple of years ago now, I guess.
Much more impressive was a shirt I got from Woot last year for about a third the price ($16, free shipping). Great quality fabric, amazing print quality.
I think I’ll check out woot then.
Just had a look, I don’t know if I have what it takes.
Can’t say that I have, but I tend to avoid redbubble in the fabric department. Doesn’t surprise me that they wouldn’t be top notch though.
Some people pay good money for see-through shirts. I didn’t pick you for the type.
True story, I used to have a purple button shirt with, what can only be described as, black mesh panels down the sides. That’s as close to a see-through shirt as I’ve gotten. 😛
I was going to go through the Freo shop to see if they had a polo or something like that. Then I remembered that there are various corporate shirt places that have shit like that and you just order whatever you please then have your company logo on it somewhere.
No, nothing like that. I’ll see if I can find a picture of it somewhere. I know one exists, I just don’t remember if it was recoloured or not.
I agree. The quality of the shirts took a marked drop in quality about 5 years ago, which is when I stopped buying them.
I just cracked a milestone in Numenera recaps. I hit 100,000 words total for all of the recaps that I’ve written to date.
In case you were wondering, the 100,000th word is bottom.
Hehehe… bottom 🙂
Also well done! 😀
Huh… I see the guy Scree is helping me trying to cosplay this year, on the bottom of the page
LoL?
Yep! That very character from it and the same skin too
When did you go blonde?! =O
Lol nah, just wigging it! 😛 I’d never change my hair colour
Mr Burns?
I know isn’t it… excellent?
Hijacking.
http://imgur.com/Nx23l5p
Down to the nitty gritty now
ITS THE EYE OF SAURON!
I kid =pWhoa that’s looking awesome!
He’s going as one of those horned jars from Zelda?
No autocorrect, Zeldaering is not a word. The heck is wrong with you?
Nothingerad. Whynt?
@redartifice Loving Marvel Unlimited; so affordable and convenient and I’ve caught up on so many series and issues I never had the time or money to get into before!
Any series you recommend I should get stuck into? (P.S. I only seem to enjoy post civil war/secret invasion series whichever came first) Already done:- Hawkeye, Star wars, Black Panther, Ultimate universe, and up to speed since the Marvel NOW! reboot.
House of M?
Yeah up to speed on that as well =P I’ve kind given up on the X-Men now, post AvX they got interesting but the writers just kind went all over the place after the first couple of issues.
Wolvering and X-Men was a great read though!
I enjoyed Avengers Academy recently. Writing was head and shoulders above a bunch of others I’ve tried to read.
(Operative word: Tried. Some writers are outright shithouse. Like whoever’s currently on whatever Marvel Unlimited has as its current/latest Iron Man. I was pretty disgusted with the whole Stan Lee era writing. “Watch out, Iron Man!” “Exclamation, other character’s full name! Allow me some exposition on what we’re doing right now, who against, and name and describe our powers!” “Gasp. I am thinking a thing as an exclamation with an absurd amount of establishing detail for the readers!” Bad enough to see that style crap on the first page, but all through the damn issue? Fuck off.)
Yeah I’ve read some bad ones myself and either skip until the writers are changed or drop the series all together. Have you checked out the Fear Itself event? That’s a pretty solid read!
Iron Man post Marvel NOW! had one interesting arc i.e. the Extremis and after that just went to hell. Superior Iron Man just ticked me off just like I couldn’t stand Superior Spider-Man.
With Avenger’s Academy I think I jumped on during Avenger’s Arena which has a lot of the same cast? I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy those characters =\
What are your thoughts on the new Cap Am?
Haven’t read. I’ve actually missed most of the major events. House of M, Dark Reign, Secret War… Civil War is probably the only one I’ve read in full. And yeah, Extremis was rad.
Oh, if you want a laugh sometime, try reading X-23’s stand-alone series. I wanted to see what her whole deal was because I love Wolverine and just kind of dimly aware X-23 exists, and… wow. It’s like… textbook emo teen girl fanfic. Has to be seen to be believed.
(Edit: Also missed: Fear itself, and whatever the Red Skull one was)
Sounds more like a series that’ll reduce me to tears with bad writing =P I could never enjoy X-22 like the Wolvy comics; they keep writing her into damsel in distress situations which used to piss me off.
Definitely check out Fear Itself, Dark Reign and Siege (OMG SIEGE WAS AMAZING). AvX is a good read as well but you need to keep yourself up to speed on the X-Men arc that leads up to it to really appreciate it. Oh and also check out Secret Warriors, really really good series.
Oh, yeah, I read AvX, the whole phoenix thing. Not bad, although a bit contrived. Seems no-one’s even lamp-shading the fact that every ‘super’ is clearly a deranged psychopath without a shred of empathy or compromise or reason.
Siege is sounding familiar for some reason, I may have caught some bits of it.
@transient I think I enjoyed AvX because it brings Cyclops’s character development up to that point to fruition. I think what the Avengers were getting at is the Phoenix force is a world destroying entity repeatedly drawn to the Grey’s always ending in catastrophe, so less every hero is a psychopath, more no one can control the phoenix. The first couple of X-Men comics after AvX are also really solid reads.
Siege is the end to Dark Reign, so don’t jump into it until you finish the Dark Reign series. Oh and if you like the old X-Men comics check out “Wolverine and the X-Men” it’s light hearted and kind of sets up the future team of X-Men.
@transientmind
I’ve heard that somewhere not too long ago
Wolverine dieswhich is obviously impossible, refuse to believe, not canon, going to ignore. Until it’s inevitably reversed, in which case it will be excellent back-story.Yeah… I think he does
He loses his powers through some genetic crap in Marvel NOW! so he can’t heal anymore, everytime he pops his claws he starts bleeding too much etc etc to the point where Beast designs gloves that close his claw wounds whenever he pops them. I think X-22 is meant to be the new Wolvy post Secret WarsOh and I’m off the same attitude with all the changes post Secret Wars, ain’t no female Thor you’re just some woman weilding mjolnir. Thor’s just busy weilding jarnbjorn, cap am aint dead either! and neither peter parker will always be spidey and wolvy is alive as far as I’m concerned =P (that said pretty sure wolvy is a victim of the on-going Fox vs Marvel movie battle)
The female Thor arc has been fantastic.
And Cap isn’t dead atm, just aged.
See, I haven’t read any of the Thor stuff, but I did see a Kotaku article about a WORLD of Thors, and the whole thing was really absurd. I don’t get a ‘female Thor’ anyway. Are we talking alternate universe, or did ‘Thor’ at some point become a job title instead of a name? And when someone else picked up the mantle, did he have to give it up? Which begs the question what REAL Thor’s damn name is.
@transientmind the Thor world is about the current Secret wars thing, so it’s a bit weird, and is a one-off. The Female Thor currently has the mantle and powers of Thor. That doesn’t mean she’s slotted neatly back into the old role- she doesn’t have all of the personal relationships, or the history with other characters.
She’s also been kicking arse.
The previous dude who was Thor is currently referred to as Thor Odinson or just The Odinson. He’s still around, but he’s in a bit of a funk anyway.
@transientmind The world of thor’s stuff is as red said Secret wars mash up, it’s an excuse to reset the MU and start with a fresh board of characters. Thor is still around but he’s using his axe (enchanted to kill immortals or some such nonsense); as I understand it he went through some dodgy stuff and lost confidence and his way and became unworthy of mjolnir so someone else wields it now. @redartifice nothing against female Thor but I can’t get into any of the alternate identity crap Marvel likes to roll out every couple of years. E.g. Black Panther even though Shuri is technically the panther I’d rather read about T’challa or Superior Spider-man, while I know people loved the series I couldn’t even touch it cos it felt wrong reading a Spider-man that wasn’t Peter Parker (more open to MIles Morales as he runs a lot of parralels to the inception of the Spider-Man series) I don’t envision too many comics I’m going to want to keep up to speed with post Secret Wars at the moment, they’ve alienated me by changing around too many of my faves.
You forgot the overuse of bolded italics for emphasis.
EDIT: Amusingly, Kotaku comments won’t let you put bold and italics on a word. 😛
Wait, Superior Iron Man? is that the one you don’t like?
Nono, the one that’s before that, uhm… lemme lookit up. (Superior’s kinda cool, although the whole Axis personality-switching is a bit meh.)
Hm, OK, I read the Gillen-Lee take with the Mandarin stuff and that was pretty damn awesome, and the secret origin of Tony Stark wasn’t toooo bad… dammit. Now I can’t find it.
Fucking categories. It was post Armor-wars, whatever that was, it’s the entry that shows up when you go Browse, Characters, Iron Man, Comics, and sort by most recent. Which can’t actually be right because the issue I’m looking at (with not-great writing by David Michelinie) is 2013. Where the hell’s the rest?
But when you search ‘Iron Man’ in ‘series’, there’s like… eight goddamn series claming to be 20XX-Present). I just want to read everything in order, is that too much to ask, Marvel Unlimited?!
Edit: Further experimenting reveals that the series search doesn’t allow you to see whether a series is on Marvel Unlimited until you jump into it individually, doesn’t allow for sorting by current date, has ‘present’ tags for series which haven’t had an issue since 2013 or were one-shot annuals, and doesn’t do wildcard searching or word searching, only exact alphabetical order (eg: A search for ‘Iron Man’ does NOT show ‘Superior Iron Man’ or ‘Ultimate Comics Iron Man’).
Yeah their app filter and search functions are a bit convoluted, I just add a series into my library as soon as I find something I want to read down the line so I can look it up straight away, seems a lot more efficient than using their search.
Runaways.
I’ve been reading Exiles, nice and self contained x-book
New Avengers
Astonishing X Men (Whedon’s run)
Because it’s the best thing: Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E
Marvel NOW!’s New Avengers? Are you enjoying that?
Did Runaways and Exiles when they first launched; loved Morph, reminded me of Deadpool =D
Nah, the original Bendis run with Luke Cage.
Thor: God of Thunder is very good
Mark Waid’s Daredevil run
Because it’s the best thing: Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E
Oooh yeah that was a good New Avengers series; only read the first couple and enjoyed Luke Cage a lot. Good call!
I loved God of Thunder during the first arc; i.e. the serial killer story. But hated it once they started the Roxxon arc.
I’ll check out Daredevil and Agents of H.A.T.E. =] Thanks Red!
I’m so fucking keen for the Luke Cage Netflix series.
Actually, Alias (the Jessica Jones series) is also quite good.
Yeah Luke Cage just has a really enjoyable down to earth personality; I think I would’ve preferred him as the Capn America than the Falcon. Can’t get into his Cap Am series at all =\
Absolutely loved the Hawkeye series though; waiting for more of the comics to come out on MU to finish the series =]
Finally got a hold of all necessary numbers to start processing my tax return, and either something has gone hilariously wrong, or for the third year in a row (despite being unemployed for 3 months) I’m getting a stupid amount of money back.
This is only initial estimates and I haven’t calculated anything for childcare, deductions, health insurance/Medicare etc. but I’m already up to 5 figures. Seriously, this is why I feel like I’m not getting paid enough all the time.
*holds out hand*
Yeah. We could really use another sofa.
I could pretend like I’ll be rolling in money but 3/4 of it will go on bills and loans, and the rest towards a house deposit.
That’s cool. I only wanted 1/4 anyway.
Sorry, that was…uuh..a rough estimate. I’m actually putting 5/4 on bills. So YOU need to pay ME.
Man I am jealous. Even if I claim all the stuff you can claim without providing evidence, I am lucky to get more than $100 back. I guess that means my company does our tax well and I get more money throughout the year, but some ‘forced savings’ would be nice 😛
My last employer was…not good with tax. I tried to fix it a bunch of times and gave up cause they failed each time. I figured I’m still getting the money I’m owed, just much later than normal 😛
The ATO is making interest on that money that should be yours though. Bastards.
Being unemployed for part of the year usually results in large tax returns. You would have been getting taxed based on the assumption of consistent earning throughout the year. Being unemployed means you’re getting refunded for the taxes you overpaid, and you’re probably being dropped to a lower tax bracket too.
When I quit university in 2001 I started working full time probably around August/September and earned, I dunno, $22,000 or something that financial year. I was working in a warehouse netting ~420/week as a casual. When I did my taxes I accidentally said I’d started working in January 2002 and therefore to have earned as much as I did my taxes should have been higher so I wound up getting hit with an $800 bill. I called them up and corrected the error over the phone to correct the calculation, and I was actually due a $2,000) refund (which came through conveniently while I was in Melbourne for Manifest and enabled me to buy a pile of anime swag that filled the boot of the car of the dude who drove me down there).
Five figures seems a bit ludicrous but I’ve no idea what your typical earnings/tax are so I’m not in a position to comment.
I had that a few years in a row then determined I was getting way more taken out in tax than I should’ve been. Last year I barely got anything in my return. Sad to see that enforced savings go.
My preliminary estimate (before downloading bank account details and stuff) was something like $43. I hate you. 😛
5 FIGURES? You’re including the two after the decimal point, aren’t you.
As kermit’s already mentioned you get taxed on an annualized basis so if you do lots of part time work or you work/income come in high income bursts you’ll end up paying a lot of tax as the income you earn weekly or monthly is annualized and then taxed at that income bracket even if in reality you annual income is considerably below that bracket. (E.g. you earn 5k this week but earn nothing for the next 5 weeks your tax is charged under the assumption you earn 5k every week).
When you do your tax return this effectively rebalances that and your tax is reimbursed so you tax paid matches your actual annual income bracket. Once you get to this point you bring in your tax deductible items which is just icing on the cake =]
Did you claim the tax-free threshold?
I never did because when I started working full time, I’d claimed the threshold for the work I was doing as a tutor at university. Then I forgot about it. Then our company was acquired and they were like ‘if you claimed the tax-free threshold with your old company don’t claim it from us as well’ and so I didn’t because I couldn’t remember. Then it turned out new company was really shit at bookkeeping and got tax wrong a bit so I never claimed the threshold so I’d have a buffer if they fucked up, though if they ever did fuck up it was in my favor. But then because I assumed they’d screw up tax on my leave payout when I quit, I never claimed it with my current company, so I still get ridiculous tax returns.
July 8, 1985.
VHS MK.2 ANNOUNCED
THE FORMAT WAR IS OVER as VHS Mk.2 aims to combat issues as expanding televisions highlight the obvious quality fault with the format. A JVC spokesperson announced this week that the proposed new format brings ‘much more detail’ that ‘looks incredible and deeply lifelike’, bringing it seemingly in line with Betamax. This was however despite slight blur on some of the larger, new 68cm Trinitron televisions we observed it on.
This puts the final nail into the coffin of Betamax as sales of the Sony format continue to fall. Sony head Akio Morita refused to comment on the matter. JVC hopes VHS Mk.2 will become adopted as the new standard in home entertainment.
Oops, reply fail. @freezespreston
:*
*:
.*.
˙*˙
( _ )*( _ )
Urgh, formatting ruins everything.
I wanted multiple spaces to make it a butt :'(
Too late, ruined it, way to go liondrive! D=
NUMENERA: TALES OF THE NINTH WORLD
I’m on a motherfucking boat!
cc @blaghman @tech_knight @popdart5
TONIGHT 7:30 SA TIME
I’ll be there.
Speed 2: Numenera edition.
“We have to stop this runaway boat!”
Cast float on the boat..rename it frying duchman, open up a restaurant
Hopefully I don’t run behind after my grocery shopping tonight. If I’m late, that’s why cuz I’ll also be collecting dinner 😛
Finished the Trooper story in SWTOR today. I’ve gotta say, I’m really impressed with the story. For what seems like would be the most boring class actually has been my favourite story. Probably because companions are actually involved with the story instead of randoms off the street that just follow you for some reason.
Also, this brings my non-force users class quests completed up to 3/4. Next up is the Sniper/Imperial Agent.
Remember to give your agent a name that sounds like it could be a codename. It makes the whole spy fiction element of it cooler.
I’ve already got a character but I think I’m gonna reroll it. I made a non-human agent and a lot of the conversations are just awkward at best. Kinda ruins the whole experience. Thinking maybe going a the human/robot race.
IIRC I played a chick with minor, ‘subtle’ cybernetic implants. But yeah, the only acceptable non-human race for the Agent is Chiss, but even then it feels wrong.
I found that the absolute best way to play seemed to be with two characters in co-op, so that you could smash out the combat faster, and each person gets to keep one of their companions out, meaning that they’re ALL nattering at some point or another. Plus you roll off against how the ‘team’ handles the planet quests and different philosophies, and each PC gets their time in the limelight with the story missions with what looks like murderous backup.
With 12x experience from story quests it’s pretty much just jumping from story quest to story quest. Grouping up helps a little but not as much as if you were going to do side quests too.
@freezespreston I’m reading the Wrasslin RPG PDF, in terms of what you need to start do I just pick a gimmick and send you the scores based on the Core Gimmicks sheet?
I’m up to Chapter 4 and a half currently, working my way though it!
Pretty much. Maybe just a short idea of what your character is about as well.
Look! It’s @sughly on Good Game!
You would think that he’d be able to afford a decent webcam, now that he’s a big shot game developer.
Platinumed Bloodborne last night, im pretty proud actually and telling anyone who will listen 🙂
Just wanted to shoutout to Sean @blaghman who gave me some initial encouragement and tips on here when i was struggling atvthe start.
Thanks again, your advice paid off!
No problem, I just love seeing people enjoying games (unless they’re games I don’t like, where I’ll seethe at them), and I’d had exactly the same issues. Nicely done on the platinum, too, I never seem to have the motivation for them, even when I’m really close. :/
Only platinum ive ever had, just felt compelled to complete it.
thanks again
Platinum club! *high five*
Well done!
NUMENERA: TALES OF THE NINTH WORLD
@blaghman: Armoured up
@popdart5: is all tentacular
@tech_knight: Is wearing a woman (NOTHING SUSS)
Thanks for playing!
Video here: https://youtu.be/-H1aGSmqNfE
#numenera #justninthworldthings
Numenera: Tales of the Ninth World – Thirty-first Session Recap (10th June 2015) starring:
– Blaghs aka @blaghman the tough Glaive who masters weaponry,
– Elandar Kintan aka @popdart5 the foolish Nano who controls gravity.
– Scrappa aka @tech_knight the mechanical Jack who talks to machines, and
– Storyteller aka @redartifice the awesome GM who weaves tales.
The sun rose over Harmuth as Blags, Elandar, Scrappa, and Zippa stirred from their respective beds at the Tentacle’s Rest tavern. It was much appreciated by the adventurers that they were able to rest in a comfortable bed after several days trekking across the wilderness. This new day promised the group an interesting time as they needed to gather together a wide variety of interesting items in order to journey to the bottom of the sea. It was there that they hoped they could acquire the mysterious substance known as Gharolan and, for Scrappa and Blaghs at least, save their friend Phetys from the parasitic infection caused by the Devona. Elandar was mostly along just to experience new things in the Ninth World.
Read more at http://taynumenera.tumblr.com/. (Yes I know that this one was a bit late but finally it’s here!)
I love Frund.
The Deschn is a darn beautiful ship
The image I borrowed is apparently a drawing of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The live-action Disney version!
I just stood on a rusty nail..thats how my mornings going, how bout yours?
You got your tetanus? I got free parking today at work, so can’t complain.
The last one I can remember was over 10 years ago so possibly?
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tetanus/expert-answers/tetanus-shots/faq-20058209
If it was over 10 years you need another one. Every 10 you’re supposed to get a booster.
They actually stopped that. Now you just get a booster if you puncture yourself. I know because I asked my doctor when I turned 25 as my last one was when I was 15 and he told me that.
Acutally, the tetanus vaccine is usually combined with the pertussis (whooping cough) and diptheria vaccines (Boostrix is the brandname), so if you’ve had a booster for whooping cough (which is important if you’re spending ANY time around babies and young children, or pregnant women) then you’ll be covered for tetanus too.
Fiddle Dee Dee…
Pretty much, except it was nails holding up electrical cabling, i wish i could of destroyed it
Life Is Strange is currently 20% off on the PSN store. Debating whether that’s sufficient saving for me to pick it up yet…
PS: Hi @strange
It’s my game of the year AND a branching pathways game. Research for your game. Also I’ve never regretted paying full price on PS4 for what it’s worth. Was worth every cent.
And I’m pretty sure* that makes it tax deductible
*So not sure.
Nah, I checked when I got my ABN for my writing career. Sadly, no tax deductions for me.
“research for your game” = tax write-off?
When I’m running the world, this is the first thing that gets up, even before breeding licences and my revised eugenics programme. Vote for me.
Damn you shane. My wallet hates you.
Pretty sure it’s hated me since you first bought one of my books.
#businessasusual
@transientmind @sunsoar77
Neil deGrasse Tyson tickets have been secured. Premium front section.
It’s happening!
@popdart5 I giggled: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nobel-prize-winner-peter-higgs-regrets-fielding-your-physics-based-dungeons-and-dragons-questions#.VZ2zp2LJJL8.twitter
The title alone is gold.
Happy birthday @masha2938!
@mashaa2938
@masha2398
@masha2932
Ha! Nailed it.
totally
What this guy said! (Except without all the errors. :P)
Happy birthday, Mashaaaaaaaaa!
Happy birthday Masha!
Ha ha, thanks Freeze.
MAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!
Happy birthday mate
I just want to apologise with my behaviour yesterday. I was having a really bad day and felt miserable.
I looked back over your posts to see what you were referring to, and I’m still confused.
Sorry you had a bad day (I hope today is much, much better!), but I see no evidence that you took it out on anyone.
I didn’t take it out on anyone, but I was just really down. I hated the fact that i have all these game ideas but never see them get out of concept. That I had 75% finished a visual novel myself before scraping it because I hated the artwork. That I often hate my own drawing style. That I can’t really do anything that isn’t fan art. That I seriously suck at faces. That I still write like a teenager. That my cosplays will never be as good as I want them to be, no matter how hard I work at it. There will always be heaps of people better then me, some of them in tay. I’m stupidly jealous of @sughly (sorry, keep up the good work). That I will probably never really make the bookmarks work, because I’ll stuff it up somehow.
So yeah, I had a lot going through my mind. I think the fact that I’ve injured my index finger on my right hand which is my drawing hand and my sewing hand, so I can’t really work on anything, is not helping either.
Sorry /o\
You should just make stuff, put it out there & see what sticks.
True artists are never happy with their work & just learn when to stop rather than ever expecting a finished state.
I’m always angry that I never get past the conceptual stage of stuff I do. Sounds like you’ve come quite close to having stuff worth sharing. & you should share, before you get “past it”.
🙂
I will try, i guess
A few things:
1. Insecurity is par for the course, especially when it comes to creativity. The creative impulse requires you to exist in a constant state of contradiction (I think I’m paraphrasing Stephen King here). You have to be thinking, “This is worth doing. This is hot shit” at exactly the same time as you’re thinking “This needs more work. It’s bad, and needs improvement.” It makes dribbling idiots out of all of us, and destroys our ability to have a reasonable opinion regarding the quality of the work.
2. Insecure (or as I like to call them, normal) people are pretty much always their own worst critics. Sometimes you’re right, but other times you’d be amazed by how incredibly way off you can be. (Case in point: I think Undad is kind of mediocre in a lot of ways, but the unanimous response from readers is that it’s by far the best thing I’ve written. Honestly, I don’t see it.)
3. Only practice makes perfect. Most of the people who make a professional-looking product have, prior to this success, invested years and decades of thankless, tiring, demeaning and soul-shatteringly-mediocre-quality practice (this is even the case for people to whom creativity comes naturally). That’s the part of the process you don’t see. For my part, I’ve been using most of my free time to write for more than twenty-five years, and I’m only just now starting to feel like the training wheels are coming off. Notwithstanding the five years of development, I hate to think about the amount of work Sughly must have put in honing his writing, design and artwork abilities. In short, if you just keep writing, the teenage-level prose will eventually evaporate. If you keep drawing, your faces will eventually get good. If you keep making cosplay, you’ll eventually break someone’s eye with amazing.
The first few years of any creative endeavour: always tough. Always.
Perseverance is practically always the determining factor in creative success. Not ability.
PS: Your bookmarks are hot shit. Just so you know. The Zelda one is one of my daughter’s favourite things, and is used every day.
Edit: woo! Lecture about why you shouldn’t be feeling down. As if that can be helped. Clarification: your feelings are legit, but your perceptions may not be on the money.
I have been writing and drawing on and off for years. Actually, writing has been even longer.
Cosplay has been the least amount of time. I swear I always end up hitting a wall and never getting past it. Doesn’t help I am 30 in two years. Oh god.
Thank you though. I know I am my own worst critic but I can’t help it.
As for undad, it speaks to a lot of people. Zombies have been popular for ages but it’s always from the heroes perspectives. Brett is an antihero. He’s not trying to save the world, he’s trying to be there for his family, despite the condition he’s facing
I dunno about best thing you’ve ever written, though… I personally liked the slightly more complicated nature of Peaceful Tomorrows going to more interesting places, but I strongly suspect that Undad has more to resonate with folks.
I just wanted to add, Zelda is probably the one I am least happy with, but I’m glad your daughter likes it. I also want to make sure that you didn’t pay for the bookmark right? Because I’ll be annoyed if you did.
Don’t worry, I pinched it as a finder’s fee, and sent myself into a massive shame spiral that ended when I sent you money for the ones that legitimately sold.
I told you that you could have the money as you were doing me a massive favour.
Yeah, this, a thousand times. Even during production, I was stressed and down about my own work. I spent a large chunk of the 4 years on Anna’s Quest pretty much at my desk, on my own, feeling like a lot of what I was doing wasn’t good enough. Daedalic didnt announce their working on the game for ages and I used that as a milestone of feedback, I thought as long as I work hard and impress people with that trailer it will be worthwhile, but… when it was announced I heard next to nothing. A few articles trickled by, I did what I could in social media but it was just empty and noone seemed to care. Thing is, my problem was that I was placing too much emphasis on what other people thought as a justification for what I was doing, when I needed to (and still do need to) work on my own self confidence. My point is that, even with a really promising contract like I had with Daedalic, it’s still a long hard slog of self doubt doing creative work. I could get stuck for weeks on one background, redrawing it over and over and feeling like it just wasnt going to happen, I really felt like I was staring at a brick wall for a lot of that time. Only now after four years of this kind of mental place have I felt like I’ve had a chance for critical praise, something which on many, many occasions I thought genuinely would never come, and to be honest, it goes some way to helping self confidence but not as much as you might hope.
In a nutshell @scree, just keep on keepin on ^^ working as a creative on your own work is never going to be easy, and there will always be more talented people (I can easily name a hundred people I’d switch abilities with any day).
I’m sorry about the re-drawing backgrounds a lot. I hate backgrounds and it’s probably my weakest point aside from faces. I’m glad that things are going well and I know as well as anyone that it’s hard work, I don’t doubt that for a minute. I was just feeling so depressed yesterday that even though I knew these things, I couldn’t help but be upset about it.
I’m still gonna be jealous of your talent though =P
We’re all insanely jealous of @sughly and his talent (galena? Seriously autocorrect?). That’s just a standard state.
Yeah, this. I can’t pretend there isn’t a link between Anna’s Quest and my sudden otherwise-inexplicable desire to launch myself into game design.
Yeah, but i should be inspired, not envious.
There’s barely a hair of difference between the two. They’re on the same side of the same coin in terms of emotional response.
I know a lot of artists and have occasionally been one myself. I would challenge you to find any artist on the face of the planet who hasn’t stared admiringly at the work of someone they consider better than them, and thought, “Oh my god, this person’s talent is amazing… I hate them so much. I wonder if I eat their heart will I gain their power?”
#MostCannibalisticManOnTAY
Hey Sughly, you should come over to my house to check out my game collection >_>
Do you really need perfection or even completion to be satisfied? Or are you just chasing it because that’s the logical conclusion? I realised years ago I hate completing games. I like the idea of finishing them, and if it was this big ‘the story is done’ moment I think it should be then it’d be great, but ultimately the final 10% is just the bullshit I put off doing while I was having fun because it was annoying or boring. I’ll polish some aspects for months and love ever second, but with a gun to my head I still won’t even touch others. You release something and then it’s this thing that’s either unfinished or so finished that everything you don’t like about it is set in stone. When I looked back that was never the part I enjoyed.
Now I just enjoy the process. Most of what I ‘make’ never moves past the design document stage. It makes me a really shitty artist but I just like building and I enjoy myself in the moment. I’d like to produce something other people can enjoy but trying to make something I think is good enough for other people tends to be more of a demotivator than a motivator. If I make TAY a cake it has to be perfect, but if I make me a cake it’s just a pile of ice cream vaguly shaped like a duck because I want to eat some yellow and white ice cream and ducks are hilarious. I still make stuff for other people from time to time but I don’t get so hung up on it now I recognise when I’ve let a for me project slip into a for everyone mindset.
Also on a side note I enjoy watching people make crafty stuff so when I’m bored and looking at TAY your project updates tend to stand out, and I’ve never seen anything that comes off as low quality. If I threw them under a microscope I could probably point out some imperfections in your bookmarks but I don’t think I’d be able to give you a single reason not to sell them. It doesn’t sound like a huge deal because plenty of people sell garbage they should be ashamed to charge money for and I get the impression it’s not about making a thousand dollars for you, but you’re passing the point where your artistic goods are equal in value to actual money. That’s a very under rated accomplishment.
As a 30.5 year old I can say that it’s crazy and shitty but it’s not terrible. You feel your age. You realise things. For instance I’ve always wanted a family of my own. Like I remember being 4 and wanting to hurry up and have kids. Now I’m realising that I never pictured being this old when I started a family. I can still have kids but it definitely won’t be what I pictured. When I was 25 that would have made me super depressed. Like I’d missed out on my purpose in life. I’m not saying my insecurities are gone now or that it doesn’t suck to miss a chance at something, but all the confrontational stuff that comes with turning 30 has made me more confident in my ability to live with things.
My life hasn’t been particularly adventurous but I feel like just getting this far is enough to hammer in the idea that even when I’m stuck on a path I’m still in control. I never truly thought it was, but now I know life isn’t musical chairs, where you turn a certain age then the music stops and whatever chair you landed on is your life from that point. It really makes a lot of things I worry about less stressful.
That said it doesn’t magically fix everything. This morning I saw an ex-girlfriend from high school make a comment on a mutual friend’s Facebook profile and just being reminded she exists made me regret pretty much every decision I made in high school, even though I love where all my shitty decisions led. Maybe when I hit 40 that’ll go away. =P
I look really young so I often forget I’m older then I think. =P I often get people asking me how high school is and stuff, it’s really weird.
On the game making. I’m not looking to make a commercial success, it’s more that I think the game will be fun, or interesting and I would like to see it get out of the concept stage. I like finishing things. I dunno, I’m also a terrible perfectionist.
How dare you.
I, for one, am shocked AND appalled. But… mostly what Shane said.
You will never be forgiven for your crimes.
Screw you Blaghs. I will make you forgive me one day!
It’s not up to me. The universe shall never forgive you. I’m sorry, Scree, but there’s nothing any of us can do.
What if I give the universe a free bookmark?
Against the cold, never ending dark, what use is a bookmark?
…knowing your place?
So you can be reminded that your place is to be forgotten, not even registering as a blip on the cosmic scale? Another worthless cog in an irrelevant machine.
I did not expect such darkness from you.
But it’s free!
Ugh.
Emo Blaghs.
I was going for nihilistic 15 year old philosopher, which is close enough.
That’s more like it. 🙂
Squirtle!
Normal or shiny? >_>
All are good
Shiny are going to be a chance only thing at conventions, but I will make exceptions for taybies
Someone called?
😛
jimu shivers with anticipation
It’s ok Scree, my bruises will heal…but the confusion? The confusion will last forever.
…seriously, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
See response to shane
Well this explains why you’ve been so mean to me! And why you’re building the eye of Sauron!
I was mean to you? When?
Ok maybe I made that one up, but I figured I was keeping with the theme!
Your posts didn’t seem off yesterday and your art style’s amazing, and what little I’ve seen of your cosplay work is miles ahead of anything I could hope to accomplish!
So you know extrapolating from those statements I thought we were making things up =P
Oh, fair enough. I thought maybe I had upset you without realising.
The eye of sauron comment upset me a little but I knew you were joking. I was just in a shitty mood.
Wizardry
So, on the weekend I was feeling super drained so rather than play something myself between cleaning the house, I watched someone complete Wizardry 8.
16 hours of my life I’ll never see again.
But, I really liked the look of it. If you haven’t guessed already, doing my usual research at work I rediscovered many of my favourite JRPGs weren’t just inspired by Wizardry, but pretty much stole the mechanics.
It’s interesting (to me) because much like my beloved Shin Megami Tensei, Wizardry is labeled a Dungeon Crawler. I find this odd because although there are dungeons in SMT you certainly don’t spend all your time in them & they include as much overworld as your average Final Fantasy.
So with Wizardry it did initially start as one but over the years evolved into so much more. It evolved to the point that Wizardry 8 is an open world RPG & the only traditional dungeons are totally optional throwbacks thrown in as a nod to Wizardrys past.
Wizardry 8 is pretty much Elder Scrolls with a party & turn based fights.
Real shame Sir-Tech shut it’s doors not long after 8.
Wizardry is now owned by a Japanese company living in the past trying to remake old school wizardry only with anime avatars.
Have you tried Legend of Grimrock?
The name has come up, but no.
I try to play PC stuff but get frustrated by either my shitty craptop or controls or both.
I’ve set up my PS3 as a controller about 3 times now & after a week it’s stopped working every fucking time.
I want a gaming PC but the Mrs is being shit about it.
Should give it a go. Doesn’t need much of a computer to run and controls are very simple. All slow paced so no reflexes or rushing required.
It’s saying realtime here, how does that work?
Because it dungeon crawling not a brawler. Traps, puzzles, mazes and the occasional beastie.
I’m getting the impression I’ve fallen for another niche genre of gameplay nobody will finance again
I just looked it up, that seems to be the reverse of what I liked about Wizardry 8.
Wizardry 8 abandoned all that grid crap
I don’t know, I’ve only played V, VI and Nemesis.
Have a look at 8, it’s pretty different 🙂
Yep. Wizardry is the granddaddy for practically all JRPGs. There’s direct lineage from it to Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.
That’s what I was saying, yeah.
You play Wizardry 8?
Nope. I surreptitiously played very very old Wizardry games on Apple II at school.
SECRET WIZARD MAN
TALK AMONGST YOURSELVES ON KOTAKU AUSTRALIA
Screw you Blaghs. I will make you forgive me one day!
I am both proud and ashamed.
This is the correct emotional response.
If this had happened yesterday, i probably would’ve retreated to bed and cried. =P I was that bad.
What’s the deal with these exactly?
TAY quotes that are either particularly weird, gross, or quintissentially TAY. Either funny without context or funny in contextThe above is an example of the latter- a typical TAY fuck you aimed at a regular target with a strange rejoinder- I will insult you to make you forgive me.
So TAY.
@jimu
Re your handle: Rotting (whoever that is) has a very unfortunate cum face. :\
We should get him a tissue.
Too much?CANNOT UNSEE
Blame Malcom Tucker. He put the phrase in my head, and then I saw jimu’s handle, and couldn’t read it as anything else.
https://twitter.com/FreezeSPreston/status/613825935087800321?s=09
GreatLike minds think alike.Like minds think they’re great
I’m totally stealing that.
FINALLY
As I told @freezespreston on Twitter, it keeps my skin silky smooth
Wait, that’s not how you’re meant to read it?
It’s up to the reader
Hello TAYbies. I’ve been very quiet in here recently. This has been for a number of reasons, but predominately because reading has been hard since my most recent eye surgery. My vision still sucks after 3 weeks but it’s supposed to improve over the next few weeks as my eyes heal.
Fortunately, TV/gaming is doable and I’ve been able to maintain a presence in Destiny, Top night last night in a fireteam of three consisting of myself, @os42 and another friend of mine who is relatively new to all this PS4 online malarkey. We were in orbit considering having a weekly strike when we were suddenly joined by a fourth… so we went to do VoG, the very first complete run-through for one of our group. He was baffled but had a lot of fun. A fifth joined us outside the Door, and a sixth at the Templar. Usual hilarity around the Gorgon area and the Jumping Puzzle… good run of drops too. So we had another go in Hard… had to call it a night during the Atheon battle second time though but I learnt a lot and had my first go at Relic-carrying.
In other news, I’m still playing Elite a few hours a week and am now in my totally stripped down Asp (which can manage a 38ly jump with half-empty fuel tanks) somewhere down one of the main spiral arms. My route took me out from Federation space, a shake-down cruise towards the edge systems and visiting Pratchett’s Disc, then a trip out to achieve my ambition of visiting Mu Cephei. That meant some quite manual route-finding for the last few jumps as the ranges were high and the routing function couldn’t guide me in. I’m now heading towards an interesting looking nebula, and have a route planned that’ll take me through several more nebulae as I spiral in towards the core and then turn my gaze towards Sag A*. At some point I’ll catch up with Pixel…
Anyway, that’s me.
Damn. I own Elite… but barely touched it. I really need to make the pilgrimage to Pratchett’s disc.
It’s really changed over the last few months. More ships, the Wings features, Powerplay, progression bars for ranks and a load of hints being dropped about artefacts and weird stuff going on. If I could start a second character without losing my first I would, just so I could see what the galaxy looks like when you’re starting out.
Anyway, I’m always happy to chat when I’m on. Can’t help out or provide escort at the moment (unless you want to fly out 8000ly from Sol…), but I’ll be back in human space in a few more weeks…
TRIKEY! 😀
Good to hear your eye surgery went well 🙂
Cheers mate. 🙂 It’s still Too Soon To Tell, according to articles I’ve read by other people who had the same procedure it’s frustrating and annoying and takes a while, but they get there in the end.
What sort of eye surgery was it? I’m in in a couple of weeks for Cross-linking in my right eye to hopefully stop the progression of keratoconus.
A few months back I had cryopexy to stabilise old retinal tears in both eyes. This was a precursor to the second op – I was at greatly increased increased risk of a detachment.
3 week s ago I had PRK – suffer from severe myopia (near -11). Still blurry and double vision in both eyes, but this is expected for a few weeks, and anyway they did warn me that with such a large correction, a second surgery after 6 or 7 months to fine-tune the prescription is not uncommon. I’m getting around alright without specs but looking forward to it clearing up… Luckily I had very thick corneas (thicker than average) so I was actually a good candidate for PRK (but not LASIK).
Fingers crossed for you. 🙂
Sounds like you’ve got the exact opposite problem to me – my corneas are thinning out and bulging so need to be repaired to prevent vision loss. Expected outcome is that I go through a week or so of intense pain and all I get out of it is that it doesn’t get worse. If I’m lucky I’ll see an improvement.
Woo, stuff. Glad the surgery went well.
I just picked up Elite on last steam sale, tis a pretty cool guy. Just about to attempt a big exploration run in my Adder.
Any tips for flying out in the middle of nowhere?
I’ve done 4 major expeditions now.
First was in my Cobra, did a large circuit out to the Witchhead Nebula, or at least as close as I could get… couple of million cr.
Next I went to the Elephant’s Trunk in a Type-6. Great range but wow it needs some care managing heat levels. I was hoping to get to Mu Cephei, but was getting pretty nervous about the state of my ship. Rightly so, it was a bit of a mess when I got back. Did around 6 million that trip.
Third trip was first proper attempt to reach Mu Cephei in an Asp. Good setup, 31ly range or so, Had some trouble crossing gap between spiral arms but made it. Got to within a hundred ly of Mu Cephei and discovered there was a 36ly jump required. Turned round, headed home. 17 million cr from that trip.
Spent some time trading, bounty hunting and generally making a nuisance of myself, and then set off again for my big trip to the core as described above. 🙂
I’ve gone for the Asp again (as the only ship with a larger range is the Anaconda and I can’t afford it… yet…). This time, I was really careful with my loadout. It’s so light that I can outrun nearly anything big enough to cause me trouble, and anyway the range is so large that I can cross the edge systems in 2 or 3 jumps and get straight to high-sec systems on the way home. So here’s my loadout…
[Asp]
BH: 1I Lightweight Alloy
RB: 2D Power Plant
TM: 4D Thrusters
FH: 5A Frame Shift Drive
EC: 4D Life Support
PC: 1D Power Distributor
SS: 5D Sensors
FS: 5C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 32)
6: 6A Fuel Scoop
5: 5A Auto Field-Maintenance Unit
3: 3A Auto Field-Maintenance Unit
3: 3A Auto Field-Maintenance Unit
3: 3E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 8)
2: 1C Advanced Discovery Scanner
2: 1C Detailed Surface Scanner
So tips for exploring –
1) some music (Radio Sidewinder is pretty cool…) or TV (Tour de France works for me) as background. It’s lonely out there.
2) get in a routine when preparing to jump or tape a checklist to your monitor – it’s so easy to drift off, daydream, get distracted by the TV, and fly into a star. When I’m ready to leave a system I then follow this checklist:
1) Fly away from fuel scoop zone.
2) Target next destination system.
3) Align with destination.
4) Throttles to zero.
5) Engage FSD
6) When charged, throttle up until countdown begins, then immediately throttle back to zero.
That means that at least it the cat starts poking me after jumping, I’m very unlikely to have any trouble when I drop out of witchspace.
3) Don’t detailed scan everything in every system. Ice planets aren’t usually worth it. Gas giants are if they’re close, but there’s no point flying for 10 minutes to pick up a distant one, or that brown dwarf that’s 350,000ls away. You’ll get a feel for the rocky/water/earth-likes and whether they’re likely to be terraformable, always detailed scan those. Always. That’s 30-60000 cr each, plus discovery bonus if you’re a long way out.
4) Chillax and enjoy. You’ll see a lot of “samey” systems, but then you get surprises – really big stars, wacky groups of binaries, a bunch of terraformables. Recently I had a binary system. The primary had 4 terraformable planets, one of which was a water world in binary with an earthlike. The secondary had 2 more. First discovery bonus if I get it will mean something like 600,000cr for that system, maybe more. 😀
The big question is, where’s @pixel_the_ferret_viking in his Adder? Did he get a new stick and make it to Sag A*? Did he? DID HE?
Is an adder a decent ship to try with? Only has 27ish ly range maxed out, sounds like I may have issues.
Tough little beast. I tagged pixel because he’ll have a better idea. Little play on ED shipyard gives this as a viable option if you’re brave and going shield and weapon free… You need to only have one autorepair on at a time, but you can leave one on all the time (unlike my Asp where I need to drop out of cruise, and shut down thrusters to fire up the autorepair…)
[Adder]
BH: 1I Lightweight Alloy
RB: 2D Power Plant
TM: 2D Thrusters
FH: 3A Frame Shift Drive
EC: 1D Life Support
PC: 1D Power Distributor
SS: 3D Sensors
FS: 3C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 8)
3: 3A Fuel Scoop
3: 3A Auto Field-Maintenance Unit
2: 2A Auto Field-Maintenance Unit
2: 1C Detailed Surface Scanner
1: 1C Advanced Discovery Scanner
That gives 27.4 with full tanks, a bit over 30 when low. It’s plenty if heading straight coreward…
Cool cool, thanks for the tips.
Adder is fine if you going towards the centre, it’s really only an issue if you’re trying to go to the outer rim of the galaxy… Adder does have a somewhat constricted view that some people take issue to, but it’s never bothered me… Will be checking out the Diamond Back once I get back home though
Receiving my stick back today so after 5 weeks hiatus I’m back baby! 2.5k LY out from the Great Annihilator! Might make Sag A* this weekend!
Cool! If you’re in Open I’ll have a chat with you. 🙂
Since recent changes I’ve been left without a lunch buddy at work. Couple that with no internet at home (which is no longer the case hooray!) I’ve spent a lot of lunches sitting at the kitchen bench with my earphones in watching YouTube on my phone. People seem to have mistaken this for me being depressed, because I’ve had about five different groups of people invite me to lunch over the last few days, all with this sort of sad ‘aw, if you feel like joining us you’re welcome to’ and while that’s nice of those people and whatnot I also find it really weird because half of them I’ve never really talked to before and it feels like really misplaced pity. Yesterday I went to lunch with a few people and said about five words throughout it, so my social anxieties are in full effect right now.
This is all that’s going on in my life right now. Egads.
My advice: You should watch funny YouTube videos, and then they might think you’re happy. #HELPING
I do! I have what’s called ‘resting bitchface’. I always look unhappy. But beneath the frown lies a warm heart or something.
I’m having lunch soon, you can come along if you like.
Okay but I don’t have any food so you’ll have to share.
Sit by yourself and start watching videos again. When someone invites you over to their group again, reveal that you’re actually watching porn.
At the least, they’ll stop pitying you.
And then make some reference about not being able to stand up just now… for reasons…
Go the whole way, pants around ankles with a box of tissues next to him.
“Alex Without His Pants”
Sounds like he’s already got that sorted.
I got tired of a full lunch room at 12:00 on the dot, so I started taking lunches at 2:30 PM.
“Lunch so late?”
“It’s breakfast time in Australia.”
“Hahahaha!”
Having to repeat that same conversation two or three times every single day is a small price to pay for peace and quiet and dodging lunchtime gossip.
Oh, I also really hate people, so there’s that.
Don’t worry, Pants.
I pity you, too.
Oh Cracks, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.
…kiss.
Christ that piracy article is getting my blood boiling, are there really people out there who think every country outside of Australia functions the same way??
Which third world country did you grow up in? I’m sure you’ve mentioned this but it’s slipped my mind
I think he’s from Columbo, Sri Lanka if I remember correctly?
What the hell DC! Have you got like a secret black book with every TAY’s secret identity =P
Edit: And yeah grew up in Sri Lanka; family were middle income earners so we certainly weren’t the worst off but even friends I had who ever considered to be the top 1% (i.e. had mansions etc) would only buy pirated games/movies, etc.
Double Edit: Worth noting for everyone who thinks Steam is a viable venture; no one in my family every had a credit card. Hell they still don’t back there. Banks don’t exactly represent security of capital in third world countries as the government can empty citizen’s coffers with legislation if they want.
…
Yes.
So when you say you’re making notes in people’s files, that’s not just an amusing joke? D:
Ooh, let’s quiz him! DC, where did I grow up?
Snowtown?
Correct! What sort of dog do my parents have?
Don’t really know breeds. Lab? *shrugs* 😛
@dc Correct! Final Question: To what address should I have the courts send the restraining order?
Never change, DC. You’re magnificent.
QUIZ!
@dc, an earlier title for one of my books was described by my publisher as “fantasist soft porn.” What was that title?
Triumviratus?
Haha! Nah, that’s just guessing. There’s no file. I dunno, but yeah, some things I remember better cause of mental association. Like when I first heard Columbo I thought of cop show and a strong mental association was created. 😛
@dc, nice dodge.
By the way, it was Death’s Feast, which became Peaceful Tomorrows.
Info for your file. We both know there’s a file.@dc’s TAY wall: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LA72tWx212c/VElGom_ZVyI/AAAAAAAAHpg/qCsae2KzzmE/s1600/20141019_000733.jpg
And my search brought me here: http://crazywalls.tumblr.com/
I may never leave.
I’m kinda disappointed my own sense of nostalgia wasn’t satisfied, when the One Hour Photo movie wasn’t included. Kinda different but kinda the same 😛
This is better, the first one had a serious lack of red string
Pfft, amateurs.
I had a crazy window back at uni, which I used to draw physics notes on. I can also routinely fill up crazy whiteboards at work and why are you looking at me like that no I will not take the pills nor wear that coat GET AWAY FROM ME LIZARD FREAKS
I like to think they’re over multiple walls with lots of pins and threads connecting them.
The spam followers are really out in force on Twitter these days.
I’m getting a thousand favourites from accounts that have attractive women in the profile and do nothing but tweet pictures of T&A. Not even spam links. Unsure of the point of these accounts.
I mean, they’re fun to scroll through though.
I’ve been followed by about ten of these in the last week or so. Very odd.
Hmm… *checks account*
Dang.
I think you have to tweet to get those types of followers …
I totally did! At some point.
I guess they hope for the follow back.
I used to check the random accounts that favourite/follow me. I’ve blocked hundreds of the damned things. I don’t bother anymore. It’s not like I’m achieving anything by having a follower count that’s almost accurate.
Oh, Destiny’s scheduled maintenance for 4am-12pm PDT… so… 9pm-5am. So much for my plans to get two more prisons and a Crota in tonight… I suppose the upside is it will force me to test my theory that Friday and Sunday nights are consistently laggy as hell because “Australian infrastructure” + “Netflix” = “bandwidth starvation.”
I’m not sure if I’m getting bored of Destiny again or not.
I played from release right the way through Crota’s End consistently, but after my holiday in January, I didn’t really bother to go back to Destiny. I started again in the lead up to House of Wolves, and have been playing consistently since then, but I think I’m starting to hit that point where there’s very little to keep me playing.
I very much enjoy playing with my core group – crucible, bounties, raids, PoE, etc – but that’s all that I’m playing for at the moment.
Still psyched for Taken King, though.
He says, with 8 tabs from the Destiny subreddit open…
The Second In A Series Of Fantastic Posts In Which Negs Describes The New Anime Season Shows So You Don’t Have To Watch Them.
Only got through four shows last night. Also started into Aquarion Logos but it was getting late and I was sleepy and the first episode is a double episode and it’s also such a weird show that I don’t think I can follow it without being fully awake.
Non Non Biyori Repeat
I don’t normally go for slice of life stuff, but when I do, I like it to be like this. There’s a term in Japanese art which I’ve mentioned before I think, ‘mono no aware’. It basically describes being aware of the transience and impermanence of life, the idea being that understanding nothing is permanent and nothing is perfect enhances its beauty. The really good so-called ‘slice of life’ anime tend to try and do this. Non Non Biyori is one that actually succeeds. It basically follows highlights in the day-to-day life of four girls that live in a tiny rural village in the middle of nowhere. What makes it work aside from some wonderful scenery porn is Renge, who has a very innocent view on everything due to being only about five years old. This is the source of a lot of comedy. It’s a really entertaining, lighthearted and positive show, really good to sit down and watch as a pick-me-up compared to the shit of everyday life. This is actually the second season. I think you could start here (the bulk of the episode is a flashback to Renge’s first day of school) but you’d be better going back to season 1. About the only thing I was a little disappointed with was the opening tune. It’s still nano.RIPE and still good, but the piece they wrote for the first season fit the tone of the show brilliantly and this one not so much.Akagami no Shirayukihime
Aka ‘Snow white with Red Hair’. This is a shoujo anime so aimed at girls, but I often find that when done well (usually when the protagonist is made to be actually strong and capable) I enjoy this style heaps (recent example: Akatsuki no Yona). Shirayuki (lit ‘white snow’) is a talented herbalist in a small kingdom, where she stands out from the rest not just by being the ‘fairest in the land’ but because she has bright red hair, which is incredibly rare. Prince Raj, the crown prince of the country, declares that she will become his concubine, and she responds by immediately running to a neighbouring country where she meets a swordsman and his two friends. Things progress and the prince sends a basket of poisoned apples to which he has the antidote, but in another twist from the usual, it is the swordsman that eats the poisoned apple and passes out – and then it turns out he’s also a prince. I honestly don’t know how this is going to go. I enjoyed the first episode but a bit worried that it could go off the rails quite fast. There doesn’t seem to be as strong a conflict or a hook as other shows of this ilk. Still, adding it to my watch list for now.Aoharu x Kikanjuu
An extremely boyish girl who dresses in guys clothing gets involved with a really good looking guy who is the extremely popular leader of a host club. Due to a series of unfortunate events, she loses a challenge and ends up racking up an enormous debt which she can pay of by working… as a member of his airsoft team. Yes, the premise sounded a lot like Ouran High School Host Club. No, it’s sadly nowhere near that good. I’m not entirely sure what audience this show is aimed at. It’s basically about a girl who acts and looks like a guy hanging out with super fabulous guys, getting hot and sweaty and firing off their loads at each other? I don’t know. First episode wasn’t too bad and I might give it another couple to see how it’s progressing but it’s kind of mid-tier and wasn’t doing anything much for me.Monster Musume
Aka ‘Everyday Life with Monster Girls’. This is a thing that actually exists. Holy shit. So apparently the governments of the world had been lying to us all this time. Monster people exist, and now they have signed some kind of agreement allowing for cultural exchange programs. Main character (if you can call him a character since he has the flavor and personality of a slice of white toast) finds himself the host for an extremely persistent and under-sexed Lamia. For those playing at home, imagine a hot redhead with huge boobs… except from the waist down her body is an about ten-foot-long snake. Apparently the law states that if a monster-girl comes to harm or harms a human she’ll be deported, and that also precludes sexy times. Which might be okay because the sheer mechanics of it are mind-boggling. Next episode, our hero’s wierd harem apparently expands to a Harpy and a Centaur and based on the opening there’s also at least a Slime and an enormous creepy Quelaag-style spider-lady that may make me just Nope right out if I haven’t already. In 2674 when they’re digging up the remains of our culture to try and determine what caused the collapse, they’re going to discover this show and realize this is where everything went wrong. I’ll probably watch it all 🙁Part 1 is here. Won’t let me add it to the post. Stupid captcha bullshit.
Damn it Neg, don’t capitalise like that. I keep trying to work out what the acronym is
Dammit TAY
My work here is done
I remember reading about the Manga in another manga I had.
Story still sounds like garbage.
What manga?
Monster Musume.
I should’ve clarified that earlier, sorry.
http://buffalobar.com.au/new-england-summer-feast/
*breathes heavily*
Also @redartifice should check this out: Hell-bound Wing Challenge
16 minutes? That’s a short time
That’s 8 times longer than I’m used to.
… Wait.
If you don’t mind I might sit this one out…
Sea food is the worst food. XD
I didn’t tag people for a reason. I specifically didn’t tag you because of the seafood. I may not have a file on people like @dc, but I remember some things.
Pork and Fennel Sausage is my favourite seafood.
If I was in Brisbane I would be so up for this.
Now I’m hungry. /o\
@jimu is having a sausage party, maybe you can get a bite to eat there?
No *little* bites at *my* sausage party
So Sausage Party is a thing that’s happening
Do I dare ask what that is?
Movie
Getting the guys together to go watch Magic Mike?
Rawrrrrr
#RottingsCumFaceSausageParty
I’M THERE!
So somedays I get really stressed out, and annoyed with stuff.
Today is one of those days.
on those days I need this song
It’s 9 mins long, but I think the whole thing is worth it. really relaxing, but modular enough to not put you to sleep
This Red Ash Kickstarter is really getting me down. The idea to make it a PC exclusive delt a huge blow right out the gate, and now they’ve scrambled to add a console stretch goal to get things back on track but because they weren’t planning on doing it they’ve got no details. It’ll be XBOX One, PS4 or Wii U, depending on a poll taken after the campaign has finished. The poll will almost certainly result in it being ported to the PS4 but it’s still a leap of faith.
It’s like Mega Man Legends is so cursed that even the look-alike is doomed. =(
I thought Mighty No. 9 looked like it was progressing okay, issues with how they ran some of the fan side of things aside?
From what I can tell Mighty No 9 is almost done, they sent us out the platform selection polls last week, but they did have some behind the scenes problems. I get the impression that getting it out on all the consoles together was way more costly than they anticipated, thus the decision to make Red Ash a PC exclusive.
Shenmue seems like it’s peaked but at least it got somewhere. It’s not a very enthusiastic campaign but it is what it is. Red Ash seems to have just stumbled out the gate. For some reason nobody is interested in it. MML3 aside, I’ve wanted a game like this for ages. It sucks to see it overlooked and mismanaged.
It doesn’t help that Bloodstained recently had a non-stop thirty day circus surrounding it. It makes anything that’s not kicking goals hourly look like a total failure.
It’s probably more of a case of PC having better profit margins, easier development and more people with No. 9 having expressed a preference for PC.
IIRC Mighty No. 9 was pitched as PC originally as well.
EDIT: I actually hadn’t even seen this Red Ash thing yet, by the way. Looked it up and I think the fact they’re going with an anime simultaneously is going to fuck them up.
Also there’s no way in hell that either production is being made with just that tiny budget and I wish these companies would stop undercutting Kickstarter for indies that are actually getting 100% of their funding from Kickstarter.
Yeah. I think at best the anime is going to reach the 5 minute goal while totally sabotaging the game’s Kickstarter by splitting the audience. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of the anime, I just don’t think it’s right for the Kickstarter and it’s probably not going to help either of them that they’re running together.
Yep.
Especially when kickstarting anime production so far hasn’t had a lot of success. Little Witch Academia seems to be the only thing where it’s worked, but that was making a short film sequel to another short film and they were super upfront with all their budget and stuff and ended up getting about five times what they needed to make what they’d carefully budgeted.
It sucks, I really want the game but I don’t think its happening.
It’s the worst kickstarter I be seen, & I backed Shenmue
Shenmue’s only real problem is they’re being so cagey around their external finances (presumably because they actually can’t reveal the nature of their funding deals). I’ve seen (and even backed) far worse than Shenmue 3.
I thought the stretch goals were vague.
I think most of Red Ash’s kickstarter is vague.
Everything I see about the game world and general concept I love but I’m a lot more confused about minor things than I should be. Is it actually episodic or is that just what they’re calling levels/chapters?
I don’t thinks so?
But this is exactly what I mean. I didn’t realise it was previously PC exclusive before you mentioned it.
I can’t fathom why a physical copy costs so much (other than them not expecting many backers & trying for more cash for less reward)
I was reading the new Penny Arcade kickstarter for Automata and apparently something absurd like 27c on the dollar goes to shipping physical rewards.
That sounds insane. But it also checks out with what I’ve heard from a lot of wrecked Kickstarters about the rewards giving them problems.
Yep, if you’re running a kickstarter need to allocate at least 30% of your funds to production & shipping of rewards to be safe.
That’s fine, but both Bloodstained & Shenmue are almost half the price. & Bloodstained hired an experienced crew just to organise its kickstarter, so fuck Red Ash in its greedy ear.
@jimu: Bloodstained and Shenmue aren’t real kickstarters. You’re helping them prove the game is viable so that actual investors can pitch in the real amount. At least the Shenmue guys acknowledge that – the Bloodstained guys never did and it’s bullshit. Their game can’t be made for what they collected, they’ve gotten maybe a fifth of what they need.
I always feel a little bad for Kickstarter campaigns. There’s this pressure to give someone who pledges $99 at least $99 worth of stuff. If they go higher you want to give the even more than what they paid because they’re genuinely trying to help. How do you turn around to a $500 backer and say ‘this isn’t a Kickstarter for a line of t-shirts and key rings, so $500 gets you a digital sound track and a tier 4 thank you in the credits’?
No, Bloodstained said it from the start. First vid & in the faq, they’ve always been upfront.
Shenmue got in the shit for not saying so but everyone could tell.
This only confirms my thoughts that they need more cash so you get a shit deal with Red Ash.
Was mighty no9 totally publisher free in the development stage?
Shit sorry, Tranny, that above ones for @negativezero obviously
@jimu: MN9 was never associated with a publisher when they were pitching it but you knew there had to be one involved. Also things were far too organized right out of the gate for it to have been reliant entirely on KS funding, but again they never declared their other sources.
I’d be more interested in backing it if I had had a chance to play MN9. It’s a different staff and director – actually better suited to the game they’re making than MN9 had – but I think that maybe MN9 is going to be a disappointment and they’re trying to get this funded ahead of that bombing.
@negativezero With how steady the flow of pledges was for Bloodstained I sort of suspect their private funding included $500,000 pledged slowly over the course of the campaign to keep the Kickstarter looking healthy, active and popular. I know it’s paranoid and cynical but if the money is going in there anyway why not use it to help people feel more confident in pledging to the project?
@dogman: holy shit, that’s a disgusting idea that absolutely has to be happening in a lot of cases. 🙁
Completely forgot to gloat about this when it happened…
So, for my 30th my sister decided to completely rebuild the arcade cabinet i bought for $110 some 10 years ago and surprise me with it.
http://s433.photobucket.com/user/chuloopa/library/Arcade%20Cabinet
Not only did she do this, but she painstakingly LEARNT how to do this from scratch to be able to do it!
When i got it, it had a pretty busted up MAME board, but now has a fantastic Jamma board with some 60 games on it!
She did the wiring, sourced the parts, painted it and got the graphics made up.
That fruit fucker isn’t a decal – it’s printed directly onto a metal sheet that she then bent into shape.
I really can’t describe how amazing this effort is.
between this and the puppy my wife got me, this was the most spoilt birthday EVER! 😀
I HAVE A MOTHER LOVING ARCADE MACHINE IN MY ROOM!!!
Is that T-Bob on the front?
Fruit Fucker. From the Penny Arcade comics.
He’s a juicer.
penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/06/04
Soooo, gonna introduce us to your sister?
She’s gay. And has a girlfriend.
PLOT TWIST
I’m not hearing a “no”.
Hah. I misread. Yes, these are sounding like plusses to me.
*grabs popcorn*
It’s a challenge!
You sure lucked out in the sister sweepstakes. 🙁
My sister would sooner shiv me than give me a birthday present, what an awesome present!!
#happyfamilies
That’s my extended family.. my god they are scary some of them.
Holy shit dude.
That’s freaking rad!
@redartifice @tigerion @dc Peeps I just wanted to say thanks for helping me calm down and rebalance after that piracy article; the whole issue is like an exposed nerve for me and usually I just end up seeing red when it’s raised. That said I greatly respect everyone in TAY and you guys engaging with me just released all the steam before I said/did something really stupid.
I didn’t know you from Sri Lanka man, nice! My buddy named Rish was explaining to me how the housing system works in Colombo, when his grandma lost a house under a renting by-law recently.
Are you cricket fan?
I kid you not I know like 3 friends who have the name Rish/Rishi, goes to show you lankans aren’t all that original with their naming conventions =P Anyways my home country has a lot more wrong with it than just rental legislation. I think my grand-dad summarized it best when I was a kid “everyone intelligent enough to realize this country’s doomed leaves, meaning you only have the morons left behind to run the place”.
I hate cricket. Never speak of this again. *chills down spine/thousand yard stare*
That’s heavy, I’m sorry to hear that mate. I hope your ‘Pa was able to come out to Oz with you as well.
You may be the only Lankan I know who hates cricket. If your love/hate relationship is about playing ability, you’re not alone. I really like watching, but I quit at 12 years old when I got hit in the nuts by the first ball at the father son cricket day when my dad wouldn’t stop laughing at me. F dat guy.
I know and I don’t think I know anyone else from my country that shares my distaste for the sport; can you imagine going through high school with my set of opinions?!
Yeah I could never appreciate the concept of a rock hard ball hurtling towards you and you were expected to whack it with a stick; but wait you have to stand a certain way. P.S. Always wear ball guards when playing with proper cricket umm.. spherical throwing objects.
No prob man. Internet commenters get the better of all of us at times (See: Gormergoobers)
Hmm, I hope my comment didn’t offend.
Not at all benny, I felt you raised a valid point and I asked myself why didn’t I utilize steam when I was younger and came to that realization. It’s funny the details you take for granted, my mom still doesn’t know how to use an ATM because of how rare cards are back home.
@negativezero if that’s their plan, I’m pretty sure it backfired. I’ve seen a few comments of people wishing they’d waited til aftet, because atm they’re not sure what to expect.
Personally I wish they’d played attention to the bigger picture. That’s the third big kickstarter from a Japanese developer in as many months & I’m not comfortable parting with more money right now as it cuts into my game budget.
Its a real shame, I love Megaman Legends & this is going to fail from bad timing & poorly handled communication possibly more than from demand.
Maybe if they’d timed it better & explained their plans, there’d be more of us willing to part with our cash. The more expensive rewards is just the bitter icing on the cake of shit.
Ugh, I am getting frustrated at my finger still being sore. I can’t actually sew or draw and I’m pushing it by working on Techie’s leg armour. (It requires pressing the cardboard together). Even using a mouse hurts. Hot food sets it off and I seriously thought it would’ve healed by now.
Switch hands? :p
I’m not a lefty unfortunately.
Or ambidextrous
Play some D3?
D3?
Diablo 3 =[
clicking also hurts my finger -_-
Use your middle finger and ring finger!
(god I hope lion drive doesn’t see this)
I try but… I may have to go to the doctor
Mild salsa in Chilli Con Carne is so very disappointing.
Adding salsa* to a chilli con carne is so very disappointing. Fresh ingredients!
(*I assume salsa to mean something from a jar)
Diced tomato is perfectly acceptable and I don’t think it’s possible for vinegar to be fresh. Still, you’re otherwise right.
Salsa needs lime juice, not vinegar
There are occasions where I don’t have fresh citrus juice in this house. I know, I’m a failure because of it.
A tiny bit of white vinegar does the trick if you’ve got nothing better to use.
Get the bottled lemon and lime juice that they sell in the supermarket. Keeps for ages in the fridge, and gives you a passable zing. Especially when limes can be so expensive!
Nope. Just nope. Hate that stuff.
Today was good, right up until the point where it wasn’t.
Don’t let your puppy eat from the compost heap. It does not end well.
For those that weren’t following on Twitter, Alice is currently fine and spending the night under observation. She started acting sick. I took her to the local vet and after some induced vomiting, everything was peachy keen. Well, extraordinarily smelly and still a bit not great.
Silly Puppy!
You should look up Remy the Poop-Roller by Diana Thung. It’s a cute little graphic novel about a stinky dog. We have a signed copy and it’s very funny and sweet.
Had a sewing sort of day. I’m making strings of bunting for a pre-school dance, and a little girl’s nightie made out of a remnant of cute monster print flannel I found at Lincraft. Once all that stuff is out of the way, it’ll be time to start sewing up things for PAX.
So Brisbane was okay. A bit warmer than it is down here.
I think this weekend even the Brisbanites are supposed to be getting the cold snap.
Brisbane’s low over the weekend is Canberra’s high.
Indeedy. Good chance you guys will get snow this weekend. Very glad I was at Mittagong yesterday and not over the weekend. 🙂
Snow predicted down to 600m, just as I go up to Sydney. So disappointing.
Ugh I’m supposed to be going down to Mittagong tomorrow ;_;
You’ll need all the warm things. 🙂 Are you going for fun or family visit? (I was visiting my parents)
Friendly obligation? 😛
Pillowmaker is in a play or musical (I forget which) so me and Wingman along with another friend are going down to see it. We’ve been warned to rug up and bring blankets, apparently the hall is quite chilly.
Fingers crossed for snow.
Soooo I was organising Avenue Q with a bunch of friends and just invited Flute Girl to come along too for some reason.
HelpwhatamIdoing.
I think that’s what they call dating.
Avenue Q will be fun!
hmm
Well that was a close one 😛
Gotta count posts carefully 😉
Why did the lizard go to the doctor?
Because he had aReptile Dysfunction
#dadjokepagesix #hi @strange
I went to buy some milk from the supermarket before, the lady asked me if I would I like it in a bag.
I told her I’d prefer it would stay in the carton. Hi @bish!Q: What’s black, white, and red all over and doesn’t fit through a revolving door?
A: A nun with a spear through her head.Without looking at your spoiler…. the Worlds Largest Newspaper!
Now to check if my answer was right…
O.O
A herd of sunburnt zebras? 😉
Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis
#PageSix #WhatHaveIDone #RedsFault #MoreLikePageSuxAmirite
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Spell.
Spell who?
W-H-O.Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Kertch
Kertch-who?
Bless you.#FamilyFriendlyPageSix #hi@strange
My son tells the best knock knock jokes.
He picks two random, unrelated words .
For example:
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Pizza
Pizza who?
Pizza tomato
Then he cracks up.
My kids’ favourite is more disturbing…
Why did Sally fall off the swings at the park?
Because she doesn’t have any armsKnock knock
Who’s there?
Not Sally.At your’s makes sense XD
*at least
I think a lot of kids go through that phase. 🙂
at ages of around 3-5 years old(ish) kids begin to understand wordplay and jokes.
Yes indeed. That period, which coincides with the period they’re developing the sense of self and all the other funky mind tricks that make us human, is so cool. Watching a mind appear. Brilliant.
I meant specifically the phase of finding nonsense answers to jokes funny – it’s that phase where they understand it’s a joke they’re telling, they understand the structure of the joke, but they’re not actually telling a joke yet… really amusing but not for the reason they think. And then BANG they get it and they’re telling actual jokes and vacuuming up joke books… My nephew is right on the cusp of this. He’s driving his mum bonkers at the moment with his surreal blathering. 😀
Awwwww yeeaahhhhhhh
My son is reading a book that says chimpanzees share over 98% of their genes with humans. I was surprised because their legs are shorter and you wouldn’t think they’d fit.
I don’t trust stairs…..I feel they are always up to something.
Napoleon may not have designed the coat he wore but he did have a hand in it.
I ordered rabbit stew, but had to return it because there was a hare in it.
How much room do you need to grow fungi?
As mushroom as possible!I found bacteria growing on my chocolate bar. This is proof that there’s life on Mars.
My therapist says that I’ve got a preoccupation with vengeance; we’ll see about that.
I’ve just been fired by Pepsi.
I tested positive for Coke.
A limbo dancer walked into a bar.
He came third.
Why do scuba divers fall backwards into the water?
Because if they fell forwards they would still be in the boat.\o/
My mate asked me today “why are you carrying a 9ft book?”
I said “it’s a long story”
He liked horror movies as a child but then he gruesome.
:’)
http://reactionimage.org/img/gallery/7154536228.jpg
<3 so.damn.proud!
What’s happening today, tayboes?
I’m in for another full day of nothing to do. Yay!
Recovering slowly. I’d gladly swap you if I could. So sick of feeling rubbish :\
You’ve caught the flu that’s going around?
I reckon so. Either that or just some hella nasty chest infection which then developed in to a cold/flu. It started off as just a seriously painful cough (not painful in my throat, but pain in my oesophagus/lungs,) but now I have started on the anti-biotics to fight that, it’s attacking my head, so now my face is leaking more than Edward Snowden. At least I can cough up all the crap without wanting to die in the process now though!
Apparently the new starter at work (only been there a week so far) has been off all week too, and still off today as well, so I’m gonna take a stab and say I got whatever it is from him. Which is good in one sense, cos at least my boss wont get sus on me having the better part of the whole week off. One of our other team members has been battling with milder symptoms on and off all week too.
We should do lunch in a fortnight
could be good! I only get 30mins, so nothin flash or far!
Same
Yay…
I’m fairly stubby.
Would you like to hold me?
You’re talking to the winner of an official PAX Australia Stubby Holder.
I don’t need you anymore.
@beardymcmuttonchops @rocketman dunno if that dinner is still on tonight or not, but just in case it is, I regret to inform you that I won’t be making it, lest I infect you with whatever nastiness I have 🙁
Does this now make you sickbot?
It’s his human side failing him, Welbot’s the cyborg of us machines 😛
close. my halloween alter-ego rarely makes an appearance outside of October, but it is true that at present, I am indeed notsowelbot
So, fun fact page six (that was bleedingly obvious once I’d read it, but had never occurred to me).
The origins of the term “plastic surgery” predate the use of the word plastic to describe the material made from petroleum. The word is derived from the greek word plastikē (πλαστική), which is an adjective, meaning to reshape, which can be traced back to (at least) the late 16th century in its English form. Though the term plastic surgery only came to English in the 1830s, that still pre-dates the creation (and naming) of the material by around 70 years.
I always assumed that it was referring to a similar source to the name for petroleum based plastic but never bothered looking into it.
Thanks Doctor Blaghman!
I don’t have a source for its complete name origin, but I think the origins of the term in modern medicine are from the 1818 paper “Rhinoplastik” by German Doctor Carl Ferdinand von Graefe (so it took some years to make its way to English), but I can’t actually find anything that says that it’s the first, and I just wanted a chance to show that I’ve spent way too much time on Wikipedia.
I also like the fact that every time I try and have a fact it turns into an etymology lesson.
The fact that I can see cinema listings for a Dragonball movie in a newspaper is just crazy. But also hype hype hype.
The fact that there’s also a new ongoing weekly Dragonball anime is also mental. The first episode was about Goten and Trunks getting a wedding present for Videl. The second is about Vegeta being forced to go on a family holiday. This is the greatest thing ever.
I need this inside me NOAW
We’re looking at new art for the office, my picks:
http://www.earthart.net.au/gallery/southaustralia/ui/E2OUHZSNA8-YHP-3PDKF
http://www.earthart.net.au/gallery/southaustralia/ui/DVOAME3HVV-QVJ-LI2POA
http://www.earthart.net.au/gallery/southaustralia/ui/DPLXT74W43-DWF-1Y3IO3
Pretty!
Diamond in the Sky would be amazing in a home, less so in an office. Partially cause it seems to calm for an office, mostly because it would kill my productivity as I’d just stare at it a lot.
I told my colleague we had to get one with stars. She concurred on that one
1 or 3
I think @beeawwb knows of a good pick…
*whoosh*
I like them in the order you posted them.
We’ve locked in the lighthouse and the hobbit one (the grassy one we think looks hobbitesque)
when I look again, I like them both. good luck
More seriously, the second one.
Awh. They were serious picks… I thought we were going to see meme stuff.
…Very pretty, though.
Wow_______________________
____________________________
___Much Scenery___________
____________________________
________________Very Grass_
So Sky_____________________
My recommendation:
http://tinyurl.com/p34w7m4
Yessssss
Mark just announced on Twitter that Alex Walker is the new journalist in these parts and he starts in a month. Really, really happy for him. I pester him on Twitter from time to time and he has posted some great stuff on ABC and Games.on.net in the last few years.
Finished Game of Thrones season 5 last night. Ultimately I think I was disappointed. Had some brilliant moments but a lot of it was awful.
Enjoyed Daenerys’ storyline. Watching her lose control of the city and the dragons actually being relevant for once was great. Arya and Braavos moved at glacial pace and seems like it’s being drawn out as they don’t know where they’re going with her. Everything in Westeros was just running in circles until they could get to the last two episodes. It was fun but disappointing to be able to suddenly point to something and say “they’re about to die”. When Ellaria kissed Myrcella both myself and my wife shouted at the same time poison lipstick. Wildling woman who kissed her children goodbye, yep she’s dead. Jon Snow, Benjen is outside, yeah not likely. Of course Stannis sent Davros away to burn Shireena. Of course it wasn’t going to work. They’re trying too hard and it isn’t coming across very well.The whole Jamie & Bronn in Dorne storyline feels like a huge waste of time if Myrcella is actually dead, I feel like Bronn probably got slipped some extra antidote because the other sand snake chick expected her stupid treachery (so much for “we don’t hurt little girls in Dorne”).To be honest, I don’t think Myrcella, Stannis or Jon are dead. Jon definitely isn’t, but they’re really trying to make even book readers believe it’s possible. Brienne has no reason not to leave Stannis alive, killing him has been her goal ever since he killed Renly in season 1, but Stannis’ last workds of “do your duty” will probably just remind Brienne that her duty is to save Sansa, now. With Stannis’ army gone and no friendly northerners helping Sansa and Theon escape (which in the books was really Jeyne Poole posing as Arya) I imagine Brienne will save Stannis to for reasons that will become apparent later.
I don’t know what purpose Myrcella will play in the future if she lives (or in the books where she’s not dead) but having Jamie traipse around in poorly choreographed fight scenes for no reason whatsoever is a monumental waste of time. Apart from Oberyn Martell’s awesomeness last year, the inclusion of Dorne seems pretty pointless altogether especially since they seem to have dropped the Young Griff storyline as well.
Melisandre takes a sudden random interest in Jon Snow and just happens to turn up just before he dies? Hahahahahahaha come on, they could at least try to make it less obvious.I find it best in these situations to not guess what’s coming or be continually disappointed.
I had this run a few years back where I kept guessing all the twists & turns in every movie I watched & was consequently very bored.
“I ask for visions of Azor Ahai and all I see is Snow”.Melisandre admits she’s bad at visions but come on bitch Rh’llor isn’t like a TV station with bad reception.
I’m confused
the book never went into great detail about Jon’s stabbing, did it?I vaguely remember it being a fade to black moment, but tv did a lingering shot on him dying slowly in puddle of his own heart juice.
In the book it’s “for the watch” getting stabbed a bunch then lying there bleeding out his last word being “Ghost”. On TV it was a long lingering shot of him bleeding out, definitely very dead, absolutely, followed by post-season interviews with Kit Harington confirming “yeah, I was told I’m dead and not coming back next season” which is CLEARLY BULLSHIT, KIT. STOP YOUR FILTHY FUCKING LIES.I don’t know what’s going on in it any more since @kermitron stopped posting summaries.
My next recap is due shortly after GRRM releases The Winds of Winter. Im’ guessing it’ll hit around 10 November, the same day as Fallout 4, causing a devastating Nerdpocalypse as 85% of the world’s population applies for annual leave.
Oh shit, I need to put in for that already.
I’ve got three eps to go. Can discuss soon.
DID YOU END UP BUYING LIFE IS STRANGE? FUTURE OF OUR FRIENDSHIP DEPENDS ON THIS!
…
Not really. 😛
Nice knowing you, man.
Still mulling.I forgive you.
Yeah, I marathond the first 4 seasons shortly before 5 came out and you could definitely see it starting to loose coherence and becoming more hollywood by s4.
Not that the last couple of books were tightly written but I’m not expecting great things.
I haven’t seen season 5 yet but wasn’t season 4 pretty much where the books ended (perhaps a little bit past the books as well)?
It seems to be a mix of leftovers from the book, alternative versions of what happens in the books & let’s just make some shit up so we can use the actors we already cast.
Yeah what jimu said basically.
Nah. Season four only roughly went up to the end of Book 3. There were still two books to cover with Season Five… though they seem to be making pretty rapid progress through the stories of both books simultaneously in this season (and also making a bunch of new stuff up).
Steadily unlocking stuff in Curtain Call, decided to look up how far I have to go to unlock all music for the Music Player. Was not expecting the answer to be over 100,000 (ar)rhythmia. Welp, that’s not happening.
At least I’ve unlocked 75% of the characters, I suppose.
EDIT: In case people aren’t aware, if you set yourself up for only grinding Rhythmia you can get on average 250 per song, with songs averaging 3 minutes. 5000 an hour to play the game in the most boring way possible? No thanks.
In some ways, I’m really glad I have the original version of that game, the one that has 10% of the content.
In some ways.
I have more than a few proficards from Japan that have 500,000+ Rhythmia…
Yeah, apparently no one has confirmed (with evidence) the limit yet but it’s assumed to be either 999,999 or 1 million.
Either way, those people are insane, cheating, or both.
Alice update: The vet just called and she’s in great shape. I’m going to pick her up in a few hours.
For those that missed it, Alice managed to poison herself yesterday by eating compost. She was a happy puppy, playing at the dog park when she started to get a bit shaky. I took her home (well, to where she’s staying), fed her and asked Freya’s sister to keep an eye on her.
Less than half an hour later, I get a text asking me to come back. She’d deteriorated rapidly and had severe tremors. We took her to the nearby vet, who were fortunately open, and made the poor puppy throw up. It was foul. Seriously, do not let your dog eat compost. If only because the smell is wretched.
Once it was out of her system, Alice got much better but needed monitoring and some other work done overnight. So I had to play ambulance, driving Alice around to the emergency vet centre so that she could be looked after overnight and then driving Alice back to the original vet this morning for more monitoring.
Not a fun experience. Not a cheap experience.
Oh and Alice peed a goddamned lot this morning. They had her on a drip overnight and she refused to pee when they took her out. As soon as she saw me this morning? Large puddle in the waiting room. As soon as that puddle was cleaned up? Large puddle in the waiting room. As soon as we go outside? No puddle. As soon as we get to the other vet? Again, no puddle but this time because it was raining. Alice contributed to an existing puddle instead of creating a new one.
I swear, my dog is like 90% bladder.
Glad the dog’s alright though, always scary when a pet does that sort of thing.
I probably should have been more worried. We got her to the vet pretty quickly, so it never got too scary.
Glad she is ok. My sister’s terrier got into a rubbish bin once and had to get his stomach pumped. Not fun times.
On that note, might be getting a dog myself, maybe as soon as tomorrow.
Still not sure this is a good plan but I keep mulling to infinity otherwise.
Dogs are awesome. They can also be complete shitheads. I think the balance is still somewhat towards awesome.
Yeah her silky terrier, a breed known to be calm and easy to manage, is an absolute nutjob. But an endlessly entertaining one for everyone else.
The more time I spend around dogs, the less I believe that certain breeds have traits like that.
Especially with little dogs. They’re always yappy little bastards. Well, aside from Charlie, who is just a grumpy old man.
Aw man do it! Defs get a puppy if your place allows it! I’d love to have a puppy!! If only I didn’t live in a damned apartment =[
That said I have an indoor heated pool as a consolation prize… so you know. I think I can wait a few years =P
It’s definitely on the cards, but which dog is my conundrum.
I’d love a Whippet (or 2) but I can’t find any for sale other than puppies, and I worry I won’t have the time to raise them properly.
On the other hand, I could get an older dog from the rescue mob, but probably a staffy which might have too much energy.
Kinda torn.
I say whippet
Whippet good.
It’s not too late.
Energetic dogs just need to be taken care of properly. Regular walks, trips to the puppy park, maybe even doggy day care. There are all sorts of enrichment you can give them in the yard to keep them occupied too.
If you get a dog that knows how to entertain itself, most of your work is done.
is there any whippet rescues in your state? Google them and you should be able to find one
Nah, have greyhound rescue but not whippet.
Hell there’s only 1 breeder with puppies available.
SA is relatively sparse for things compared to other states.
Is it possible to get a rescue brought in from another state? Sometimes the pounds will accommodate.
Hey, there’s an SA contact for the Victorian whippet association, so it may still be possible.
http://www.whippetvic.com/available-rescues.php
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
I crashed with my uncle and aunt for a few months during which they got a puppy and it was the best! That said you do need to put aside quite a bit of time for the first 3-6 months in getting the little bugger trained up but that’s part of the raising experience =] You and the puppy go through it together and that forms a bond!
That said I can also understand wanting to adopt a dog and some of my veteran dog owner friends only adopt these days. That said if this is the first time you’re going to have a dog might be worth doing a puppy cos the experience is pretty amazing =]
Yeah, it’s just I dunno if it’s ok to.leave 2 month old puppy alone for 9 hours a day while I work.
Don’t have much leave available as well.
True true not wise to leave the puppy by him/herself….. there can be only one solution! YOU TAKE THEM TO WORK!!
Work progresses on the Messar Dreams visual novel game.
Tyrano Builder seems robust enough to make the game I want to make. I’ve got a reasonably detailed mind-map of where the story will be going, how the chapters interact, overlap, and influence each other, and a plan for the range of variables I need to introduce to make it all come together (there are 18 major ones, FYI).
And there are going to be some tough choices. Habitual paragon-choice makers, beware. There won’t always be a clear paragon option, but where there is, you will be punished for repeatedly adopting that approach.There are a few different endings, each with several permutations depending upon who survived the war (yep, your characters can all die if you make ‘wrong’ choices). I’m thinking the easiest way to do this will be to prepare modular ending sequences ala Heavy Rain/Beyond Two Souls.I’m having so much fun working on this.
Dude, you need to play Life is Strange ASAP. Will influence your thinking a lot I reckon, there’s some stuff they do super well (I’ve played chapter one)
Sughly’s not all that fond of Quantic Dream and Telltale and even he loves this game!
Maybe because it’s not by Quantic Dream or Telltale?
It’s a hybrid of both their styles, though.
OKAY FINE GODDAMNIT I BOUGHT IT. (cc @dc)
Thanks for the rec. Inspiration is always welcome 🙂I hope you like it.
I played the demo way back when, and thought that was pretty cool.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the future of our friendship is riding on the quality of this game.
Maybe you’ll be the one to punch me right in the face next time we hang as frenemies?
I’m gonna try and get the Shark Ending.
UFO/Dog ending or GTFO
It was you all along?!
The ending where a UFO piloted by dog-aliens shoots sharks at people. Or turns all the characters into sharks. I’m happy with either of those, Shane.
Noted. Actually, in the original plan, that was the only ending obtainable… but I decided it would mean more if I made players work for it.
As a Life is Strange counterpoint I only spent $10 on it and I feel like flushing a $10 note down the toilet would have been a more constructive use of $10.
No Game Buy 2015 thanks you. Charitable contributions like yours keep the dream alive.
But if I remember correctly you liked how it played but weren’t fond of the creative direction? Unless you lied so I wouldn’t cry! D:
*runs off crying*
But yeah, you’re not the first one to hate it. @Evilmonkey hates it too. XD
I liked the gameplay but ever single character posses me off
All sorts of games for all sorts of people, there is no wrong answer.
Unless you dislike Dark Souls and Ace Attorney. Then you’re just wrong about everything.
I don’t dislike dark souls, I just can’t play it =(
Well, I guess if I can’t get into it, it could still serve as a handy what-not-to-do.
Work snippets:
“Heh. That’s weird. This person has started their email with ‘Greetings.’”
“Verily? What doth thy genteel petitioner seek?”
“Eh?”
“What do they want?”
“To not speak like a normal person. You’re weird, you should take this one.”
***
“Oh god. I can feel myself aging as we speak.”
“Hm?”
“Marisa Tomei is going to play Aunt May in the next Spiderman.”
“Oh my god. What? No! This can’t be happening.”
“I know, right? Hey… take a look at my beard. I saw some light hair there, tell me if these are blonde or white/grey from aging.”
“Hm. Nah I think you’re safe, you’ve got a few blonde ones in th– ohwait. Newp. There we go. Definitely white. Like three of them! Old age here you come.”
“I see. I’ll be right back.”
*goes to bathroom to yank out white hairs* ohgodtheyreallyarewhitemustdestroytheevidence if no-one can see it it isn’t real
I posted on reddit about a movie I saw “when I was a kid” and had to clarify I was referring to the 80s because a reply I received incidated they thought I meant post-2000.
Dude! What’s wrong with you! White hairs are awesome! I can’t wait to get mine =D
P.S. who’s Marisa Tomei???
Only my ‘future wife’ for ages! A grossly underrated Hollywood star who is gorgeous and funny and dreamy.
Haha sorry transient I made that P.S. to make you feel older =P
Aging is great! It means you’re wiser and more deliberate and not as likely to say or do something moronic than you would’ve been in the past!
…You’re right, I AM young!
Yeah she’s the best. I wanted to be Steve Carrell in 40 Year Old Virgin.
Or George Constanza.
And now nine will grow in their place!
I’ve managed to resist doing the same 😛
Got a hold of PCCG support about my graphics card warranty. As soon as the guy looked up the RA and with no questions to or from me, I think he realised why I was calling. He gave me a full run-down of where it’s up to, the issues delaying the claim, and an ETA on progress and a future update.
It might be really shitty that this has been going on for a month, but at least some of their support guys know how to do their job well.
Blaghman’s Manly Meat
Hello Sydney friends!
So @blaghman is in town this weekend for manly music related reasons. I thought I’d offer my place for Saturday night shenanigans involving games and beverages for anyone who is interested and willing to trek out to Newtown. I know it’s late notice, but everyone should know how terrible we all are at organising things in Sydney.
I guess from like…6pm? Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
Hit me up on Twitter – a_sharples – or send me an email – a_sharples at the hot males dot com – for details on where I live etc, etc.
@35 @alexpants @anonymous_pessimist @batguy @cakesmith @cj @cookingmama @dkzeitgeist @doc_what @effluvium-boy @fatshadylive @gingerchris86 @gorzilla @harli @hugo_the_hungarian_barbarian @mawt @morkai @markserrels @mrtaco @novacascade @powalen @pupp3tmast3r @ruffleberg @shiggyninty @freezespreston
Hooray! I’m included \o/
But I have a date Saturday night.
That @dc is stealing you away from me again, isn’t he?!
*runs off crying*
Shit, Sorry. my weekly game of Cylons is that night 🙁
All good man. It’s super late notice.
But we must board games again soon. If only to dominate Resistance once again.
Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan doooooooooooooooooooo.
Sure thing.
oh no! I’m already occupado this weekend :/ I’m sorry. Will make it to a meat this year, I swear.
Too famous.
pshh, not at all 😛
I’ll only go if all the cool kids are going.
I’d like to come to more meats. But i have a bad cold that I’m pretty sure everyone else could do without getting 🙁
Board Game People!
Theres a couple of Web versions of Spyfall if anyone is interested in trying it 🙂
its like resistance but soooo not.
http://spyfall.meteor.com/
Resistance you say….
Not quite. There’s a lot more room for shit to go haywire in the bestest possible ways.
I think I need a copy of this…
Yes. You do. It’s the hot new thing and everyone must own the hot new thing.
Seriously though, it only just got a release in EU/US and we still lag behind them a little. Especially with games that sell out quickly, like this one. If you do track it down, let me know because I want a copy too.
There’s apparently a few versions floating around at the moment. Can’t remember if the one you linked is the “best” one or if there’s another one.
Either way, happy to give it a shot some time soon. The next few days are kind of hectic for me but I’m sure I could make time to hop on TS and start throwing about unfounded accusations.
I’ll let you know when I have time, might be sunday?
I put up my greatest Pokemon win, where’s yours?
@powalen @beavwa @mawtful
I think I’m just @mawt here.
My greatest win was crushing some kid at PAX.
That’s what I said.
Truth is, I’ve had like 3 fights online in Y & that’s it.
It’s possible I lost all fights too.
I actually had a few close matches at PAX last year, and those were all quite fun.
In terms of actual competitive play, nothing much really comes to mind – those matches were always “all or nothing”. On reflection, that seems somewhat odd, since the metagame was fairly rigid right up until the latest Gen. A lot of those matches came down to whether or not I made the right choice in the first round or two, so not really memorable. I’m sure I’ve got a few of those saved somewhere, so maybe I’ll try and find them over the weekend.
Win?
I don’t battle. I hunt.
And hatch eggs. So many eggs.
Y’know, I’ve now caught 18 shiny legendaries. I’ll have to post pictures of the most recent ones when I get back.
Dying of boredom, send entertainment.
Cc me in on that please
*head desk*
http://imgur.com/gallery/I40hZlm FLOOFS (Or samoyeds)
http://imgur.com/gallery/QNZQAbG Getting real tired of your shit…
http://imgur.com/gallery/k7zu4hy
How?
Oh God this last one, horrifying and hilarious at the same time… Horlarius?
Also SCREE TO THE RESCUE, saves a poor Pixel from complete and utter boredom!
Eh, the dog doesn’t seem to mind.
http://www.barkpost.com may also be of use
@Saturday i have sent your second package 😀 I will send you a reference number you can keep track of as well, should be at your place in in 3-7 business days!
I’m happy, I found a couple of things at the post office that I couldn’t find in stores so you’ll be a happy man I hope 😀
Finally stopped eating those TimTams eh =P
*Checks for crumbs*
…. Yes.
It’s funny listening to music in Pandora from back in 2000 and coming across songs that always got me labelled as [insert insult here, usually something about being gay] for liking. It didn’t stop me from liking said music, but after a while I stopped sharing the music I liked with people for years because it was never worth the effort.
These days I’ll just cram stuff on Twitter, and who gives a shit if people care or not?
Yep, music has caused more arguements for me than most other topics. I got to that point too, screw ’em, you like what you like. I’m sure if you went through anybody’s music collection you’d find something you can’t stand the sound of. My music tastes are all over the place.
Mine are eclectic as well. I don’t understand the whole “this genre is superior!” stuff
I do understand it to an extent. I find that every single genre ever is better than Country.
Yes, even Experimental Prog Jazz/Metal Fusion Math Rock.
EDIT: On a whim I just googled that horrible mash of genre names…and got results. My joke is partially ruined!
Hey watch yourself! Aric Improta are better than any crap on the radio currently. Don’t knock Experimental Prog Jazz/Metal Fusion Math Rock.
Jazz and prog metal tend to go along fairly well. It’s only the math rock that’s a bit odd there and you just know that there’s someone daft enough to throw it in.
That’s what makes it experimental, I guess?
When you’re tripping balls, isn’t all jazz/prog rock fusion experimental?
I strictly listen to heroin fueled jazz, thank you very much
I have a desk fern now. Needs a name. Suggestions?
https://instagram.com/p/48VfN2Cbwv/
I already said it on Twitter but “Oak”. You can nickname it “the professor”.
Wilton
Frondrick
Branchela
Fernard
Chlorophyllis
Steven Stigmal
Matt Stamen
Current frontrunner!
Only if you say it right.
I like @dc ‘s suggestion!
Chuck is just full of rich adventure gaming injoking!
Wash.
It’s a leaf on the wind…
http://tinyurl.com/pomwyh5
How do reapers clean their harpoons
They put them through the WashBob.
We had a cutting, just a shoot of a kind of fern that survived in a plastic bottle of water. Grew its own root structure from nothing, no soil, just water, leaves expanding and reaching – healthy, strong, green. Unbelievable. Resilient little bastard survived for six years before getting tossed out during a move.
His name was Bob.
RIP, Bob.
Gully
Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The Stars, My Destination
I was thinking Fern Gully, but yeah.
Ferny.
Wow never thought I’d see the day where an article called out all the underlying assumptions needed to keep pushing up the property market in Australia. Worth a read for those of you like to keep an eye on finance and investments.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/motley-fool/motley-fool-sorry-australia-youve-been-had-20150710-gi9gw8.html
I gave up saving to try and break into the property market. Going to wait for the market here to tank and completely go to shit and then sweep in and buy something nice off the bank for a song.
Yeah pretty much where me and my mrs have come to as well; the price differential between renting and owning with a mortgage is just too steep.
It’s not just the repayments, it’s actually saving up enough when the goal posts move >10% every year.
But Mr Abbott tells us the property market will never end and it’s good for Australia?
He also says coal is the future; the man is a GENIUS!
Clean coal that is!
#ThingsJoeSays
As a South Australian, tell that to Alinta.
Yup. No way in hell things can continue like they have been. Have been saying that for years .
http://gonintendo.com/stories/238164-battletoads-vinyl-soundtrack-announced
*inhuman noises*
Had a really nice afternoon with my Dad. My Mum went to a craft fair so Dad and I went out to lunch. I had cheese and bacon wedges and Dad had a vegie burger. Then we went to a nursery for a wander around, and after that we visited my uncle and aunty.
Also looking forward to tonight as I’m going out to a friend’s place for a game night, with pizza and drinks, which will be a bit of fun.
Woo! Games!
Video or board?
Card. Well, it’s Cards against Humanity, which I know isn’t the most popular game at the moment, but I think we’ll have fun.
A Series Of Fantastic Posts In Which Negs Describes The New Anime Season Shows So You Don’t Have To Watch Them: Bonus Round!
Because I was at my Mum’s for dinner last night so I didn’t get much time to watch much more new anime.
Himouto! Umaru-chan
Main character (who appears to actually be an adult in a shocking twist) has an issue: he lives with his 16-year-old sister. When they’re in public, she appears to be effectively a perfect person: highly attractive with a wonderful personality, incredible athletic ability and gets straight As academically. But it all changes when she comes home: she puts on a hood, shrinks down three sizes and blobs infront of a computer or TV, sucking down snacks and cola, making a mess and throwing tantrums to convince her brother to buy things (Sounds a lot like my sister :P). That’s… basically it. Umaru is ridiculously cute and the episode was entertaining, but I didn’t see much of a hook. No conflict or anything. She hides the fact she’s a huge nerd from her friends and schoolmates but that can’t possibly be enough to keep things running. And I can’t see how they can get 13 episodes’ mileage out of ‘super-deformed girl performs nerdery’. Liked it enough that I’d watch more but I suspect if it stays like this it’ll lose my interest in a few weeks.Overlord
Yes, it’s yet another presumably Sword Art Online-inspired person-gets-trapped-in-a-MMORPG show. Once again, it’s one of those deep-immersion jacking-into-the-matrix style games. And in this case, the main character, Momonga, is the leader and last remaining member of a guild, with the rest having moved on to other real-life things. They’d built a crazy castle and populated it with minions and everything. Also, they all had inhuman avatars, with the lead character being a skeletor-style undead skeleton dude in a cloak. The game had run for many years and is in the process of shutting down. He remains connected to the game as the time runs down to midnight… then keeps going. And he finds himself trapped in the game, which has now become real, with the Minions now walking, talking and living creatures. He has become the evil overlord and now must defend his guild’s castle. Even though these trapped-in-a-game shows have become a dime a dozen, feel like there’s a bit of potential here. Main character seems interesting, internal monologues in a whimpy nerd voice but actual spoken-out-loud stuff in Bad Guy Voice and stuff. Some more episodes will reveal if this has some staying power but I’m cautiously optimistic.Remaining stuff I currently have stashed and intend to watch & report back on soon:
– Aquarion Logos
– Bikini Warriors
– Durarara (though given that it’s the second cour of season 2, I can already tell you this is one of the best shows)
– Jitsu wa Watashi wa
– Joukamachi no Dandelion
– Sore ga Seiyuu
– Chaos Dragon
– Kuusen Madoushi
– Toloveru Darkness (May skip since the stream & broadcast versions are heavily censored)
– Danchigai
– Gakkou Gurashi
– Million Doll
Part 1: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/07/talk-amongst-yourselves-335/comment-page-3/#comment-3372718
Part 2: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/07/talk-amongst-yourselves-335/comment-page-5/#comment-3375015
(Putting in a separate comment to try and defeat the Captcha Demon)
That’s some kind of satire title right? Like a shot at all the fan service animes out there. If not then … Japan is getting even less subtle (and here I thought it wasn’t possible).
No, from what I’ve heard it’s basically exactly what it says on the label.
Well … I guess it delivers exactly what it promises.
Sounds like an interesting plot.
*Indiscriminate scribbling name on notepad*
Smooth.
I’m sure it’s filled with plot. Lots of pairs of plot.
Knowing Japan, the plots will be HUGE!
Got in to work today and my supervisor said I’ve worked too many hours and need to take a day off next week.
DON’T NEED TO TELL ME TWICE!
You need to take a day off next week.
You need to take a day off next week.
You need to take a day off next week.
Happy Friday everyone! See you all on a brand new TAY.
What, this tay isn’t good enough?
http://mikatan.goodsmile.info/en/2015/07/10/nendoroid-hatsune-miku-harvest-moon-ver/ *melts*
That is so pretty and adorable.
Indeed. I must have it.
EDIT: It’s possibly the cutest Nendoroid they’ve done so far, even. Top ten for sure.
I love the transparent part
Can you please explain the Hatsune Miku Project thing?
Saw it EVERYWHERE in the Japan and there’s about 35,000* different figures of her but can’t figure it out.
* could be an exaggeration but may also be true.She’s actually a character created to sell a voice creation program. She’s basically a virtual singer. She had an upgrade where she could sing in 6 different tones (Happy, sad etc. etc.) and there is now 5 different characters with different languages.
Basically what @scree said. Miku is a voice pack and character for Yamaha Vocaloid vocal synthesis. What makes her special is that her appearance and voice are available to use with really liberal licensing. The result is that a lot of popular and up-and-coming artists have used her and the other vocaloids to produce music with vocals.
The character’s spun out into her own rhythm game series and has become a cultural phenomenon. They have concerts where she’s holographically projected on stage. Opening act for Lady Gaga at one point and appeared on Letterman last year.
There’s a bunch of other related vocaloid characters (meiko and kaito are older tech, Rin and Len are supposed to sound younger and Luka has a lower pitch and better English support.) there’s non-Crypton vocaloids too – notably Gumi (Megumi Nakajima provided the voice) and Ia.
It’s actually possible to make Miku sound quite realistic. Doesn’t have to sound robotic. Look up Mitchie M on youtube. He does some postprocessing on her vocals and has her sing in Saki Fujita’s natural range.
Fun side note: Saki Fujita (Miku) was offered either a lump sump or a royalty-based payment for the use of her voice. Assumed it was going to fail so opted for the lump sum. Probably kicks herself about that every night.
Worst part about a new shiny laptop – I can’t use the old ones overworked fan to spread glorious heat throughout my room
Should have gotten a Macbook pro!
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/01/30
Penis pannini.
That looks like a perfect TAY Tagline! (@redartifice)
Oh god, not twice in one week.
Hey, you can’t just summon me and expect me to tagline any old-
TALK AMONGST YOURSELVES ON KOTAKU AUSTRALIA
Penis pannini.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_a6oZzj0IU this is possibly the weirdest thing I’ve seen on youtube this year.
Oooohhhkaaaayyyy…
I watched to about 1:20 before checking that it went for 13 minutes!!
Glorious insanity the whole way through
Club Nintendo questions.
Did anyone get anything decent from them? Does anyone know if any more rewards will be added before the September 30th shutdown? The physical rewards at the moment are fewer than ever, even the Mario hat and deck of cards are gone, mostly just tote bags, folders and digital downloads. Did the Australian club ever get any of those cool rewards like the statues they offered in America before they shut down?
I just got a Mario hat. I regret nothing.
No, we did get two games, the golden nunchuck, the shirt and the snes classic controller
I need to keep an eye out, I hope I can snatch up something good.
I got…
Mario Party playing cards
Zelda posters (those are pretty cool)
And a Super Mario 3D world soundtrack CD.
So it’s mostly useless.
http://www.vooks.net/new-club-nintendo-rewards-arent-done-not-in-europe-at-least/
Still stuff on its way, apparently. We just had the Toad lamp come and go, and the Majora lamp before it.
I got… the 3D World soundtrack, Link Between Worlds soundtrack, a Luigi DS case to use up some expiring points, and Bowser folder dealie for the same reason. Got a few other things by registering points for promos they had at the time, like the OoT and Smash soundtracks. 3D Kid Icarus and Excitebike too I think.
Yeah my indecision may cost me something decent. I have 4800 points, I really hope they have some last minute cool stuff, knowing me I’ll hold out until there’s nothing but digital rewards left, I’m good like that. Even in games I horde stuff and never end up using them.
A friend of mine got that Luigi’s Mansion statue thing which is pretty sweet.
http://mariopartylegacy.com/2013/12/club-nintendo-offering-luigis-mansion-figurine/
I wanted that but it disappeared before I had a chance to gather all my cards to register them 🙁
And the Luigi coin, I only heard about it after it was already gone. Worst.
Never bothered faffing about with their codes bullshit. Most of my stuff had UK or US codes anyway and they won’t even let you have stuff off the UK version.
@trikeabout @jocon @otherpeopleplayingEliteDangerous.
I’M BACK!
Got my stick back, works like a charm, now ONWARDS TO THE CENTER!
Was fun chatting yesterday and congrats on reaching the Great Annihilator!
I didn’t play any more after the arvo. I did get another 1000ly towards the core (but still 20kly away roughly…). I’m about 2000ly from the nebula-rich region I’ve been heading towards, and things should get interesting!
I’m loving Mighty Switch Force at the moment. 😀
Picked up MSF:HD and MSF2 for $6 during the eShop’s indie sale.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi!
Hai.
Hello.
Sup.
Today’s a @strange day indeed.
Hi @strange, and happy birthday!
Hi @shane!
And thanks. <3