- Status
I think I'm going to fail my history class... my essays are due tomorrow, and I kept putting off the bulk of the work until the last minute 
I'm writing about ancient mesopotamia now... than have to finish what I started on the rise and fall of ancient greece... than have to finish rise and fall of the Roman Empire... than have to start on something about trade routes between africa, the middle east, asia and the americas... all the while I have to be ready to take the final exam tomorrow.
I don't think I'll be getting any sleep tonight.
I'm writing about ancient mesopotamia now... than have to finish what I started on the rise and fall of ancient greece... than have to finish rise and fall of the Roman Empire... than have to start on something about trade routes between africa, the middle east, asia and the americas... all the while I have to be ready to take the final exam tomorrow.
I don't think I'll be getting any sleep tonight.
I can't play Kotor I & II with my new gfx card because drivers no longer support it.
FUCK Fuck fucking fuck this is my favourite game and it looks like Gizka MIGHT release their stupid mod after all.
FUCK i want to play again
EDIT:
HMMMMMM, so yeah tonight, i'm taking the work laptop home with me
FUCK Fuck fucking fuck this is my favourite game and it looks like Gizka MIGHT release their stupid mod after all.
FUCK i want to play again
EDIT:
HMMMMMM, so yeah tonight, i'm taking the work laptop home with me
Being a non-anonymous person on the internet has advantages and disadvantages.
To the person who signed me up at the bestiality website I would like to say the amount and caliber of emails that I'm getting is awesome. With such uplifting subject lines as:
Farm sluts getting dirty.
Watch as these sluts take horse cock.
(and my personal favorite - and I mean that)
Red rover, red rover, flip Sheila on over!
So thanks, Mr. Prankster.
To the person who signed me up at the bestiality website I would like to say the amount and caliber of emails that I'm getting is awesome. With such uplifting subject lines as:
Farm sluts getting dirty.
Watch as these sluts take horse cock.
(and my personal favorite - and I mean that)
Red rover, red rover, flip Sheila on over!
So thanks, Mr. Prankster.
S
Scarlet Varlet
3.5 weeks! Arrrrggghhhh!! I can't wait that long! Arrrgghhh!
I love bacon. A lot. And sometimes after cooking it I'll fry some chicken breasts in the grease (mmm...smoky lard-fried chicken). What I don't love is one of the breasts hitting the pan just right to send a geyser of raging hot grease directly onto the last two fingers of my right hand. That hurt. A lot. My wife almost made me go to the ER, but I'm (unfortunately) familiar with burns and a host of other minor injuries, so I'm usually sure what I can get away with in terms of first aid only.
So after spending the night icing it on and off and wrapping it up with some analgesic antibiotic ointment, I'm attempting to get through the next few days with 8 functional fingers. Looks like a solid second-degree burn with plenty of skin to slough off in the near future.
I did finish making dinner, though.
So after spending the night icing it on and off and wrapping it up with some analgesic antibiotic ointment, I'm attempting to get through the next few days with 8 functional fingers. Looks like a solid second-degree burn with plenty of skin to slough off in the near future.
I did finish making dinner, though.
fade
Staff member
I feel you. I stupidly burned both legs badly about a week ago trying to get my motorcycle up on the centerstand. I was wearing shorts and no socks and my legs touched the really hot pipes. I was worried one of them was a 3rd degree burn, because it didn't hurt at all. But it seems to be healing.Jake said:
W
Wasabi Poptart
Dear classmate,
When I say something will not work and provide you with examples of why this will not work, I really do mean it will not work for those reasons. Your response to me makes it apparent that you haven't listened to a word I've said. Thank you for your half-assed suggestions. Guess what. THEY WON'T WORK! Because everything you suggested are things that I already said are reasons why it doesn't work. Next time I'll speak s-l-o-w-l-y so you can follow along.
When I say something will not work and provide you with examples of why this will not work, I really do mean it will not work for those reasons. Your response to me makes it apparent that you haven't listened to a word I've said. Thank you for your half-assed suggestions. Guess what. THEY WON'T WORK! Because everything you suggested are things that I already said are reasons why it doesn't work. Next time I'll speak s-l-o-w-l-y so you can follow along.
Well, it's your father, and you still willingly visit him, so I assume no horrible youth traumas from that end, so, eh.
I didn't burn myself, but still, just got back from football (soccer for ye yanks), had to play with regular shoes instead of sport shoes because I couldn't find them...Youch. My right big toe's nail was folded back all the way from the root, and is now a lovely black colour, with my toe so swollen it won't fit my shoes. Gah.
I didn't burn myself, but still, just got back from football (soccer for ye yanks), had to play with regular shoes instead of sport shoes because I couldn't find them...Youch. My right big toe's nail was folded back all the way from the root, and is now a lovely black colour, with my toe so swollen it won't fit my shoes. Gah.
S
Silvanesti
Hey, you killed off my character, I figued horse cock was fair paybackEdrondol said:
No, I didn't do that, but that is pretty funny. Sorry man!
W
Wasabi Poptart
Sounds like dad needs some new underwear and a robe for his next birthday/Father's Day.Cajungal said:Well, I'm home.
This is more of a funny rant. The first night I'm home with Dad and Mom, Dad always forgets there's a girl in the house besides his wife. Inevitably, I walk downstairs and find him in 20-year-old paper-thin briefs making a sandwich at 1 am.
The dude just wanted a sammich at 1am.WildSoul said:Sounds like dad needs some new underwear and a robe for his next birthday/Father's Day.Cajungal said:Well, I'm home.
This is more of a funny rant. The first night I'm home with Dad and Mom, Dad always forgets there's a girl in the house besides his wife. Inevitably, I walk downstairs and find him in 20-year-old paper-thin briefs making a sandwich at 1 am.
I can relate.
P
Philosopher B.
Argh, damn country roads. It took me at least ten extra minutes getting home on account of I was behind some HUGE-ass tractor trailer and we were on bendy roads so I didn't want to pass. There was another guy in a big truck right on my ass.
Also, I was behind some guy in a vehicle yesterday whose head kept swiveling in a bizarrely rapid manner. Made me nervous as hell. When did he have time to look at the road in front of him?!
Honestly, I don't know how some people around here get driver's licenses ... OH WAIT, yes I do, that shit is easy-peasy.
Also, I was behind some guy in a vehicle yesterday whose head kept swiveling in a bizarrely rapid manner. Made me nervous as hell. When did he have time to look at the road in front of him?!
Honestly, I don't know how some people around here get driver's licenses ... OH WAIT, yes I do, that shit is easy-peasy.
I'm not really angry about this, but whatever.
about a week ago, I bet one of my friends ten dollars that, given 45 minutes, he couldn't drink 4 litres (more than a gallon) of milk without puking.
he puked. I went on to explain why that happened to him and everyone else. because he had bought the milk, I got about 6 bucks and the rest of the milk out of the bet, which I was fine with.
now heres the thing: even though I have explained it can't be done, about 3 more people have bet me they can do it. wtf.
about a week ago, I bet one of my friends ten dollars that, given 45 minutes, he couldn't drink 4 litres (more than a gallon) of milk without puking.
he puked. I went on to explain why that happened to him and everyone else. because he had bought the milk, I got about 6 bucks and the rest of the milk out of the bet, which I was fine with.
now heres the thing: even though I have explained it can't be done, about 3 more people have bet me they can do it. wtf.
J
JONJONAUG
Alright, since my roommate is having sex in my room right now (at least I assume he is, he text messaged me about his girlfriend being up there but he has had so many different girls up there and-I-mean-like-two-different-girls-a-week that I'm about to assume that he's gay and just brings up girls he's just friends with up there to reinforce his masculinity and is really either pounding ass or jacking off) and I got half an hour before I'll be going back there (I'm typing this in one of the computer labs because I have no laptop because laptops are for whores), I'm just gonna talk about shit you probably don't give a shit about.
Hey I know, let's talk about video games.
Or rather, let's talk about the PROBLEM with video games today. Video gamers seem to think that games today fall within two categories, the "casual" game for grandmas and low IQed women and the "hardcore" games for mature gamers such as themselves. "Casual" games are games with no real story behind them that are made for ease of play so the retarded kids can handle it, and those "hardcore" games are games with ramped up difficulty with mature stories that are apparently supposed to make you think or something.
It's all a load of bullshit on both sides really. Both sides have it completely wrong.
Video games today can really be lumped into two categories, but it certainly isn't "casual" and "hardcore". Video games can be lumped into "games" and "not-games".
Games are the ones that have truly evolved from the sprites and pixels of decades past. They're the ones that plump you down in a world and say "come on buddy, let's go see what's out there". They're the ones that are really magic, where even the most hardened programmer can look past the algorithms that make the game go along and just say "wow, this is one fine time I'm having here". It's when all those bleeps and bloops and pictures and images just come together and make something incredible. Games usually rest on a very simple concept. Although there are plenty of great games that are complex by their very nature, you'll find very few games that can't be explained in only one sentence.
Not-games are the ones that looked at what came before and said "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did this" while missing what really made games good in the first place. They're the ones that will drag you, kicking and screaming into their own little madhouse where fun plays second fiddle to everything else. Not-games are often bogged down by unnecessary things like plot exposition, trying to be serious, and the most insulting thing of all: realism.
There are a lot less games out there than there used to be. This can be blamed mostly on advancing hardware, where designers and programmers have too much room to turn their games into not-games. Advancing hardware also leads to better graphical capabilities. This leads to artists forgetting style and just going for that accursed realism instead. The worst thing is when developers who have been going perfectly along making games get it into their head to make not-games (I'm looking at you Sonic Team).
Not to say that there aren't plenty of not-games out there that try to be games and fail. I Want to be The Guy is a fantastic example of a not-game that thinks that it's an ode to games but is merely a perverse mutation of what makes a game a game. It focuses solely on the difficulty of the old games while completely ignoring everything about those games that made them fun to play in the first place.
That's also not to say that there aren't plenty of games that might've been not-games if not for some clever developers. Valve and Bioware are both wonderful at taking things in not-games and making them into wonderful games. Valve does it by putting the player in the role of an important figure in the world who doesn't actually know what's going on (and I bloody well hope they keep it that way), thus removing unnecessary plot exposition and instead turning what would usually be used for plot exposition into fun things for the player to do instead (most of the time, they seem to be getting a bit worse with this lately in the Half-Life Episodes, but Team Fortress 2 and Portal shows that they've still got it). Valve games do have a lot of story behind them, but this is always in the background, tantalizingly just out of reach to observant gamers. Bioware does almost the opposite thing in having loads of dialog and serious themes in their games, but they wonderfully compensate by somehow managing turning this into the game itself (and I'm pretty sure no other developer has been able to do anything close to what Bioware has managed to do with this). Both Bioware's and Valve's games also OOZE style from every orifice due to these design decisions.
Probably the most important thing about identifying a game is whether or not you'll be able to explain why you like it. If you can't explain why you like it, chances are you just played a real game. Real games fill you with that sense of wonderment and adventure. They make your blood pump as you overcome any challenge that comes your way. They make you gape at larger than life obstacles then fill you with pure ecstasy as you overcome them. Real games have style, charm, and most of all everything you can experience from it can never be written down in just one sentence, even if a summary of the entire game can (and should be).
Not-games can entertain. They can make you go "ooh" and "ahh", but you'll always be able to find words for what you feel as you go through the motions. "Interactive movie" is a terrible term to use in any context, but this is really what they are. No matter how good they look, anything they make you FEEL isn't going to be a result of interaction, or if there is any interaction between you and the world the not-game delivers it will either be highly minimal or scripted.
Hey look half an hour went by. I'm done here.
Hey I know, let's talk about video games.
Or rather, let's talk about the PROBLEM with video games today. Video gamers seem to think that games today fall within two categories, the "casual" game for grandmas and low IQed women and the "hardcore" games for mature gamers such as themselves. "Casual" games are games with no real story behind them that are made for ease of play so the retarded kids can handle it, and those "hardcore" games are games with ramped up difficulty with mature stories that are apparently supposed to make you think or something.
It's all a load of bullshit on both sides really. Both sides have it completely wrong.
Video games today can really be lumped into two categories, but it certainly isn't "casual" and "hardcore". Video games can be lumped into "games" and "not-games".
Games are the ones that have truly evolved from the sprites and pixels of decades past. They're the ones that plump you down in a world and say "come on buddy, let's go see what's out there". They're the ones that are really magic, where even the most hardened programmer can look past the algorithms that make the game go along and just say "wow, this is one fine time I'm having here". It's when all those bleeps and bloops and pictures and images just come together and make something incredible. Games usually rest on a very simple concept. Although there are plenty of great games that are complex by their very nature, you'll find very few games that can't be explained in only one sentence.
Not-games are the ones that looked at what came before and said "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did this" while missing what really made games good in the first place. They're the ones that will drag you, kicking and screaming into their own little madhouse where fun plays second fiddle to everything else. Not-games are often bogged down by unnecessary things like plot exposition, trying to be serious, and the most insulting thing of all: realism.
There are a lot less games out there than there used to be. This can be blamed mostly on advancing hardware, where designers and programmers have too much room to turn their games into not-games. Advancing hardware also leads to better graphical capabilities. This leads to artists forgetting style and just going for that accursed realism instead. The worst thing is when developers who have been going perfectly along making games get it into their head to make not-games (I'm looking at you Sonic Team).
Not to say that there aren't plenty of not-games out there that try to be games and fail. I Want to be The Guy is a fantastic example of a not-game that thinks that it's an ode to games but is merely a perverse mutation of what makes a game a game. It focuses solely on the difficulty of the old games while completely ignoring everything about those games that made them fun to play in the first place.
That's also not to say that there aren't plenty of games that might've been not-games if not for some clever developers. Valve and Bioware are both wonderful at taking things in not-games and making them into wonderful games. Valve does it by putting the player in the role of an important figure in the world who doesn't actually know what's going on (and I bloody well hope they keep it that way), thus removing unnecessary plot exposition and instead turning what would usually be used for plot exposition into fun things for the player to do instead (most of the time, they seem to be getting a bit worse with this lately in the Half-Life Episodes, but Team Fortress 2 and Portal shows that they've still got it). Valve games do have a lot of story behind them, but this is always in the background, tantalizingly just out of reach to observant gamers. Bioware does almost the opposite thing in having loads of dialog and serious themes in their games, but they wonderfully compensate by somehow managing turning this into the game itself (and I'm pretty sure no other developer has been able to do anything close to what Bioware has managed to do with this). Both Bioware's and Valve's games also OOZE style from every orifice due to these design decisions.
Probably the most important thing about identifying a game is whether or not you'll be able to explain why you like it. If you can't explain why you like it, chances are you just played a real game. Real games fill you with that sense of wonderment and adventure. They make your blood pump as you overcome any challenge that comes your way. They make you gape at larger than life obstacles then fill you with pure ecstasy as you overcome them. Real games have style, charm, and most of all everything you can experience from it can never be written down in just one sentence, even if a summary of the entire game can (and should be).
Not-games can entertain. They can make you go "ooh" and "ahh", but you'll always be able to find words for what you feel as you go through the motions. "Interactive movie" is a terrible term to use in any context, but this is really what they are. No matter how good they look, anything they make you FEEL isn't going to be a result of interaction, or if there is any interaction between you and the world the not-game delivers it will either be highly minimal or scripted.
Hey look half an hour went by. I'm done here.
S
Silvanesti
How in the fuck are my coworkers so incredibly incompetent?
Im fucking sick and tired of being the only one in the office with the fucking balls to admit i make a mistake and work to fix it rather then covering it up just for someone (ME) to discover later and totally fuck over.
Thanks. I appreciate working through my lunch and 5 extra hours because you idiots didn't fucking do your job.
Im fucking sick and tired of being the only one in the office with the fucking balls to admit i make a mistake and work to fix it rather then covering it up just for someone (ME) to discover later and totally fuck over.
Thanks. I appreciate working through my lunch and 5 extra hours because you idiots didn't fucking do your job.
Cajungal
Staff member
Gusto said:The dude just wanted a sammich at 1am.WildSoul said:Sounds like dad needs some new underwear and a robe for his next birthday/Father's Day.Cajungal said:Well, I'm home.
This is more of a funny rant. The first night I'm home with Dad and Mom, Dad always forgets there's a girl in the house besides his wife. Inevitably, I walk downstairs and find him in 20-year-old paper-thin briefs making a sandwich at 1 am.
I can relate.
Like I said, not a serious rant. I can relate, too. When my brother's out of town, I totally take advantage of the privacy. He's just not used to having us around anymore.
fade
Staff member
Okay. I don't get angry often, especially about work things. But this has done it. I have a grant from the Department of Energy that's shared three ways with two other departments on campus. Technically, the senior guy in another dept. has control over the money, but it was supposed to be an even split. I've been planning to hire a post-doc, and I've been actively recruiting to do so. I've been pitching the position to colleagues and at conferences for some time now, and I've narrowed my search down to one good individual. So today I go to confirm the money is there to make the offer, and the guy "in charge" (quotes intentional) tells me that the money was reallocated by the "administration" to the third dept for them to hire a postdoc. Already, they had assigned me less than a third of the money, and now they've taken a huge chunk of that away, AND I've got to tell this potential post-doc that the job's not there any more. What a load of crap. He even used the phrase "some time ago". Why the hell wasn't I a) asked b) notified or c) consulted. Not once was I asked if I was planning on hiring someone. My research plan depended on this person. Oh, I will be raising hell over this one.
Also, I'm willing to bet that the "administration" is him, and he's deferring blame onto some imaginary entity. Geez, academics can be the most petulant, child-like turds sometimes.
Also, I'm willing to bet that the "administration" is him, and he's deferring blame onto some imaginary entity. Geez, academics can be the most petulant, child-like turds sometimes.
fade
Staff member
Also, I agree JON. Video games really need to shake the "keep the lifebar from emptying or you'll die" paradigm. Or at least make it secondary. Nearly every game I've played since the playstation came out is a lifebar game. Do something different. This (and what you said) is why I simultaneously dislike RPGs and like survival horrors. RPGs are a good example of a can't-lose casual game. I've yet to see a truly challenging RPG. The baddies get harder, but so do you. They almost become slightly interactive films. WoW, FF, CoH etc all fall into this category. None of those has been a challenge (and for the love of all that is holy, please don't tell me to wait for the endgame, because I think that's stupid. It's like reading a book that's really boring setup for 999 pages, and finally gets interesting on page 1000.). Survival horrors are at least challenging and filled with actual puzzles (though "hard" mode puzzles are usually lame. apparently devs think "hard puzzle" means "obscure" not "difficult to solve".) They're still lifebar games, but that generally takes a backseat to the story and puzzle aspect.
B
BoringMetaphor
My friend did the milk challenge in less than an hour successfully. 4 litres, watched him do it, no puking!
I'd like the weather to settle on a season so I can stop sneezing.
J
JONJONAUG
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.fade said:
I love it because it's a real game of a JRPG. There's a story, but it's secondary and really doesn't play all that of a big role in your motivation compared to just about every JRPG ever made. I loved it because of the intelligent design choices, difficulty (and this game IS hard, you can't overcome bosses just by grinding, the entire turn system is based on how intelligently you fight), the artstyle is AMAZING, the dungeons are some of the best I've seen in any RPG and they're much more than your typical "go here, get key, go here", loads of the dungeons are filled with optical illusions or some really clever or difficult puzzles), and the music style is unlike almost anything else you'd expect from a JRPG.
It's one of the few JRPGs where I could play through it without giving a crap about anyone else in the game world, I was solely interested in what laid beyond the next obstacle and what I'd be able to fight next. Even the random encounters are interesting and involve some sort of strategy on the player's part.
To quote Wikipedia on the gameplay.
You gain party members by recruiting them in battle. Almost any enemy you encounter in a random battle can be convinced to join your party (there are some exceptions, a few demon clans reject you on principle). You have room for up to twelve demons in your party, but only three can be deployed at a time (main character is always active, you can also swap demons out during the battle, the game will only ever end if YOU die). Every demon has its own unique skills, resistances, and weaknesses. You can fuse demons together to make new demons (and it is highly recommended you do so, as the game is impossible to complete without doing this and many demons can only be obtained through fusion), which will have its own set of skills along with skills carried over from the 2-3 "parent" demons.Press Turn System said:
Your main character learns skills and changes resistances/weaknesses by equipping "magatama". Each magatama teaches a different set of skills and has its own set of resistances and weaknesses.
Really the game is the best RPG I've ever played and one of the best games on the PS2. If you're looking for a game with unique gameplay, style, and difficulty I would recommend this.
A
Anubinomicon
Moved: to epic win.
Grats, man! But shouldn't this go in "Epic Win"?Anubinomicon said:
A
Anubinomicon
where the fuck it that lol... i never knew of it, i thought it was something different.
- Status