Leaderboard

To be fair, CDP has very clearly and explicitly said they are NOT doing Witcher 4 and that Geralt's story is over and done. What they are doing is a fourth game using the Witcher franchise (and presumably the Witcher setting). We (and others) are simply calling it Witcher 4 as a kind of shorthand. But it's not really Witcher 4, and (again going by CDP's public statements) won't even be titled "Witcher" anything.

Or is this more politics?

In a nutshell. Depending on the nut.

I did, if you can take some of the more silly aspects of it then it's pretty good. I've been pretty sick the last week and haven't really watched anime lately. I think I'll check out Attack on Titan soon though.

Just got back from a teeth cleaning (even including insurance! whatwhat!). Cracked a beer and I think Ill go garage drink with my neighbor until my wife gets home from work.

Contemporary Research...

It's more politics. The restorative justice is the one that gets me. It amazes me how many people can't grasp that. Let them rot in prison.

Finally started watching Jojo's Bizzare Adventures - Diamond is Unbreakable. Crazy how good Jojo became over the years. For me it's probably one of the best animes now.

I see your point, it can lead to something positive in respects to the stated design changes that Witcher 4 needs to be fresh....but then I start getting worried, I am worried the design and implementation of something fresh lacks historical resonance and we get a W4 that is nothing like the previous 3 excellent games with a character we cant identify with Im sure I am being irrational but I often believe, not all the time, the old adage " if its not broken, dont fix it " ....so they shouldn't go too radical around overall design in W4

Had Netflix on the TV sitting unwatched for a bit just now, and it automatically started showing little poster previews for shows. This popped up: Thanks Netflix, but no thanks. I really hate that. It's so needlessly questionable - literally, because when it happens, questions automatically start popping up in my head that wonder why the setting and period is so weird, . Hey, it was a useful experiment: now I know for sure something like that is literally never going to work. That's good information! I forgot Hitomi even existed. Like, I had to look up who that was because I'd forgotten about her so badly. I mainly remember her for being giving Sayaka exactly one day to figure things out with her guy, which I guess is better than nothing, but shove off. I've gotten more used to Tomoyo's voice already, probably for reasons you mentioned regarding her diction and voice evenness, so it's really just Sakura herself that is less than ideal. I think I'll get more used to it, it's not like she's driving me mad or anything. (e): A couple of more thoughts on Cardcaptor:

Me too. At least I've been able to get back to writing a bit, maybe when the rona isn't so crazy I can finally shoot this short I've had ready for a long time.

Netflix recommended Kill la Kill. Decided to check out the first episode while doing my daily "rounds" on the ergometer. Ended up watching the first two. I'm not sure if this is the best, the most ridiculous or the worst thing I've ever seen. Possibly all of the three at once. It was supremely weird even before Ryuko (the main character) and her trusty giant half of a scissor she uses as a sword, found a sentient battle armor (well, uniform) that drinks her blood and puts all the chainmail bikinis in the world to utter shame... So far she won a boxing and a tennis match. Yeah. Uhm... Pretty sure I remember KP and Sarex mentioning it before.

The ultimate problem with that report was that it dealt with, basically, scenario fulfillment from the western side. In any realistic scenario of significant conflict the west would be in the aggressor role, ie the fighting will be near places like Smolensk or Fuzhou, not over a neutral featureless plain. Any western plane will not be fighting 1 on 1* with its Chinese or Russian equivalent, it will be fighting against a shed load of ground based opponents as well. Specifically with 'stealth'** that is a big deal because Russian ground based radar can definitely detect 'stealthed' planes even if their airborne systems cannot. In a situation in which Russian or Chinese ground based radar and AA has been neutralised it's either a minor skirmish that is irrelevant, or it's been raised to an Existential level- at which point nukes will (have) be(en) used which renders everything else moot. *funniest part of the report was the guy admitting that a Su35 could probably outfly a lot of western fighters, but it didn't matter because the fight wouldn't be 1 on 1 so another western fighter would just shoot it down. Well yeah, on a featureless plain, without any AA or other Russian planes about to distract western fighters. That exact sort of argument got laughed at when it was the soviets making it 30 odd years ago. **always been a misnomer, since it can fundamentally only work effectively over certain wavelengths and frequencies

In the mobile gaming world, Ive come across a few games that require a Facebook login. Instant delete.

Cast Citzal's Enchanted Armory Summon Concelhaut's Draining Touch (you cannot attack with it bc. of glitch) Wait until Enchanted Armory wears off end combat so Draining Touch disappears and Great Sword reappears enjoy your permanent, scaling, one-handed Great Sword - that you can give to whomever It's kind of nice to have a one-handed sword that has +1 PEN and +5 base damage compared to a normal sword. It's like having a unique sword with really good dps enchantments. Also you can use it with one-handed style + modal and get +2 ACC, +30% dmg and +15% crit conversion. I would love to also get the one-handed Morning Star or the armor (especially the armor) - but so far I couldn't find a way.

Malcolm McDowell and Gary Oldman were definitely big oversights on my part. In an unrelated story:

Yes. Gary Oldman

Malcolm McDowell? Tim Curry for the scene chewing.... Mark Strong? Although they've started balancing out his villain/good guy support roles.

wtf Vic

I think the one thing that would get me to replay Mass Effect isn't a refocus of the camera, but the inclusion of Johnny Gat in the crew. Oh, wait. We got Mass Effect with Saint's Row characters already. It's called SR4. Guess I am already replaying ME in an improved version

The guy in the picture you tried to link earlier. He's sometimes spelled Syaoran or even Shaolan in Romaji. There are wiki pages and entries for both Meiling Li and Meilin Li. I'm going by what my subtitles say, so... it's Shaoran and Meilin, not Syaoran and Meiling. One of the biggest misgivings - or let's say, one of the things I expected to be a lot different (not knowing anything about Cardcaptor Sakura I was half-afraid that it would end up her playing a magical collectible card game against others in tournaments) - about the setup was not having an idea what the hell they were going to do with the idea of her capturing cards, but it does work. That's about the only thing I can say. I never though it would, but it... works. The last three episodes I've seen were a bit less interesting, but so far many of them were strong enough, and I don't recall a really bad episode yet. The cards are also varied and fun, most of the time. At the moment I'm hoping that the "downturn" (to be taken with a grain of salt, the episodes where still decent to good, just nowhere near the prior ones) in quality isn't because the show's setup is beginning to wear thin. Episode 30 tried something interesting, but I wish this wouldn't have involved a new character after 30 epsides, that felt a little tacked on - the other episodes rarely feature one-off characters in any meaningful way - there are some, now and then, but it's nowhere near Sailor Moon level. The character interactions so far weren't as strong* as they were in Sailor Moon, but that's not entirely unexpected - they're also different. I mean, they're there, but I really doubt we'll be getting episodes about the meaning of life, self-actualization and how being a magical girl can mess up your hobbies or goals in life, or one of the cast obsessively trying to get herself targeted by a card. Maybe in the terrible looking Clear Card arc. *Maybe strong is the wrong word. When they're good, they're really good, they're just age appropriate.

It's about four guys who are summoned to another world to become the heroes of the sword, spear, bow and shield. They need to gain experience and develop their magical weapons to fight waves of enemies that will appear and become progressively stronger. But the Shield Hero is not respected there because he can't use weapons. And the heroes can't level up together because of some magical interference of their weapons. The Shield Hero can't do it on his own and most of the other adventures don't want to be with him, so he has a much harder way ahead of him than the other heroes. There are a lot of unfair things happening in this world, like slavery, bigotry against demi-humans and no sign of a proper judicial system. It can get frustrating in the beginning, but it pays off later. Edit: actually, there is no judicial system at all, unless you consider the ruler saying what they want.

I think these debunks are missing the point of these posts. They're not made to inspire someone to start a business instead of buying an iPhone or learn a skill instead of watch TV, they're for people who aren't working class or poor to tut-tut at the lazy proles for daring to have a semblance of a life beyond toil. The same people who make these posts could not handle the average fast food worker's job.

Ya I saw one and I really want to make it, but I guess I haven't found the plans for it yet. I don't see it in the list of craftables. I guess in my mind anyone should be able to make this right away since irl you could make a dew collector with a piece of plastic and a few sticks. hehe.. oh well I'm getting better every day. What an amazing game!

Whispers' Offensive Parry is not an aoe effect AFAIR. Riposte should work, but it's not 100% chance to proc.

Re: education, I think the studies showing how much money graduates make over their lifetime makes some people think its a magic bullet and go to college not really sure what they plan to do there or how much it might cost or what their post education goals. Back when I was a College advisor, I regularly saw students whose goal (quick degree then job because they needed skills to earn more money to support their family) would have been better served by a tech/voc school. If they wanted a liberal arts degree, they could always come back later when they were better positioned financially. There's really no right path, and coming to a liberal arts program because you want to is always going to be better than because you feel you have to, or worse because someone is 'making' you.

In that way the 90ies truly are a lost decade. It's not just a lot of TV that got made, but also films. Shot on early digital in just the resolution needed to be shown in cinemas or on TV, they don't even have any proper film masters to base a HD - or better - transfer on. While actual film transfers require work due to damage and scratches, and sometimes can't be fully transferred to modern aspect ratios like the Star Trek: TNG masters, which were shot for 4:3 and all that extra space would be unused or full of film markers, gear or people involved in the production, they are at least possible. The Sailor Moon specials probably have intact film masters used for the HD version, while the original anime is probably just a collection of Japanese NTSC tapes. Although... with the Italian DVD source being noticably better, there must have been some better source at some point in time. Hope isn't completely lost though, there are some machine learning projects going on to improve upscaling that yield much better results than traditional upscaling. It's never really going to be as good as a proper transfer from a decent source, but it's better than nothing.

Yes, kind of. It seems that several people were involved in fixing those "persisted summoned item" issues. Because there are several different fixes. One approach was to prevent the summoning in certain cases and the other made sure summoned weapons get removed properly after combat. I guess the first approach was just easier. Once a case was reported it got a bug ticket and was fixed by whoever got the ticket. Maybe sometimes that dev thought a bit ahead and fixed a bit more than was reported, but often I guess time constraints lead to a dev only fixing what is in the ticket. I guess nobody reported Draining Touch - because I guess nobody ran into this befire. Usually DT is gone very quickly (before stuff like Enchanted Armory etc. runs out) so the situation where you a) would want to summon it while shifted or with Armory in the first place is rare, then b) the situation where DT is still in your hand once spiritshift or Armory did expire is even rarer. So I just guess nobody reported it and devs didn't think about it while fixing similar stuff. The Training Touch ability (or spell) summons the weapon and also manages the removal once you hit with it. The Draining Touch weapon itself (which gets summoned) has no other properties than the ones you see in the tooltip once you wield it. An active Grimoire adds abilities (or spells) to your character once you switch to it. It removes the abilities once you switch to another Grimoire. This explains the Draining Touch trick: do not learn the spell (because then you will always have the ability that manages Draining Touch summoning but also removal) but instead use a Grimoire with the spell and another Grimoire without it. Switching to the Grimoire with DT will add the spell that manages the DT weapon. You summon it. You switch to another Grimoire: the spell gets removed and so does the part of it that would monitor whether DT hit or not. This also explains why an Essential/Substantial Phantom can use DT weapon without limits. It gets a copy of the weapon you carry - but not your abilities and thus not the part that would remove it. Kalakoth's Minor Blights works similarly: the spell manages the cycling of the elemental blights. If that spell is not there the Blights remain what they started with (e.g. fire). But here it's a fixed interval and not tied to an attack roll - so I guess that's some difference. Essential Phantom's don't cycle through the elemental variants because they don't have the spell but simply get the weapon clone from your hands. I never tried but I suspect if you summon Minor Blights from a Grimoire without learning it and then switch to another Grimoire there might be a chance the Blights won't cycle. Just a guess though, maybe it's implemented differently (didn't look into the files). They will still get removed because it's a summon with a duration (unlike DT) and that expiration will remove it no matter which abilities you currently have. But maybe one wants to prevent the cycling or whatever... Iirc Minor Blights is greyed out while you are shifted. I didn't check with Enchanted Armory though (if you can summon it while having armory). So I guess DT could also have been greyed out as well - but nobody thought about it. So to;dr: still think somebody slept on it.

I didn't even notice Rei's hair color - is it really full dark purple in Crystal? ...My gosh, I forget just how incredibly abysmal Crystal looked to start out with: What the absolute hell were you guys thinking with this? It really is a shame the entire show wasn't originally made in HD. I can watch freaking Speed Racer in HD, but not Sailor Moon...

Hard recommend. This is one of those stories that just happens to be an anime and those usually are the best anime.

Rei and Ami look so incredibly off-putting. The others would too, probably, if they had their eyes open, althouh Rei is extra offensive with that hair color. The real Rei (sorry manga fanboys ) had small patches of purple highlights, not a completely purple head: I already forgot how blurry that German DVD source really is. Although, it does help with the bug eyed alien scenes that the interns made for the season. And that scene was made by the Sailor Stars team and would have looked even better in earlier seasons. Careful, you might yet end up liking Japanese voice acting yet.

That was in the original incarnation of this thread, I read that when Shady bumped it up to get us out of the TV thread. Yeah, a long while ago actually. No, but I'm guessing I will, eventually, now that Netflix has it.

Nay, just all I have been hearing was companies abandoning E3, and doing their own thing. Just check and Microsoft indeed does still plan to have a showcase. E3 or no E3 I am always up for news about avowed.

If I remember correctly then after your report that firerand/shifting combo was patched so that you can't summon firebrand anymore while you're shifted. All the other summoned weapons get greyed out, too (Spirit Lance etc.). You also can't cast Reaping Knives on a shifted druid (or fearsome-bruted Wizard). But maybe I'm remembering that detail about Firebrand wrongly. I think they only forgot to prevent the summoning of Draining Touch. I now see that I didn't test the Warding Staff.

I don't remember mentioning it, but I did watch it a long while ago. It's a pretty unique anime, as far as I remember. Definitely worth a watch. But from that time period I think that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was the best I watched. On a totally random note, did anyone ever watch Steins;Gate?

Reads like hack fraud to me. It's also brought up in the parody I linked earlier in this thread when Madoka sits in class and says to herself: "I can't properly express emotions, maybe because my face is so wide" in a completely monotone voice, and when the scene with Mami, Madoka and Sayaka starts, the narrator says: "Looks like it is time for some exposition". That made me laugh for a while. Fixed that for you. I mean... it worked for me when I tried. Can't tell you why though, I actually had to cut out the URL, post it in my part of the post (i.e. below the quote block) and then drag & drop the picture back into the quote block, beause copy and paste did not work. One of my Robin Hood posts had a damaged layout and random letters in between that I didn't see in the preview. Working with profile pictures is also super wonky with Firefox. Not going to lie, I'm getting a distinct Sailor Moon Crystal season three vibe from that image. It's not as bad but... it's not much better either. It looks like an attempt to put a square peg in a round hole and get the pretty traditional animation look with computer rendering, but... that doesn't work if all you do is transfer handmade outlines and color them digitally*. From what I've just read the series is set a few years after the original one but has moved to 2016 or so in terms of technology and timeline, at worst resulting in as equally a monstrous techno-anachronism stew as in Sailor Moon Crystal, and wonky continuity at best. *Purely guesswork, I could not find any decent information about how SMC Season 3 or Clear Card was animated, at least not on a first glance and it's too late to try and dig up something (if there even is anything), nor do I know enough of modern animation techniques and how they're combined to know for sure. The colors to look significantly worse than the originals, at the very least, hence the guess. Some of that is really just actual Japanese. Things like "iie" which means a politely indicated no like shaking your head and saying "thank you" when asked if you want or need something in Western cultures (because actually saying no in Japanese is a big no no and considered rude), or these half-mumbled swallowed endings at the end of her sentences that put a girly emphasis on what Sakura says (mostly "ne" that seem to be randomly attached to what she says) and the various pitch changes to indicate a certain mood (sincerity, sarcasm, irony, etc.). I guess that's there to make her adorkable and cute, while Tomoyo serves as a more cultured contrast (what with her coming from an absurdly rich, high class background) that speaks a little clearer. She also says "gozaimasu" (indication of politeness, added to sorry, or thanks, or morning, like arigatou gozaimasu for a polite thank you) differently than Sakura and uses it more often, even when speaking to Sakura, while it's not necessary between friends that close. If I remember correctly Tomoyo even makes sure to actually pronounce the usually silent u* at the end of gozaimasu. That makes the entire word more subservient (or extra polite), I think. Not sure on this one, it might just be a dialect or accent thing, or classy... there are limits to what I remember from my silly attempts to get in with the Otaku crowd at school. Some context will not make it less weird or grating to hear, but perhaps a bit more understandable. *Most u (oo) sounds after an s are dropped, even in names. Also very often goes for "i" (e) sounds, like in the words used to indicate present (desu) and past (desh ita - just imagine that there's no blank in between, stupid censoring) tense. Sakura, when she picks up her phone, says "Sakura des", well, or use the probably most ridiculous sounding Japanese phrase in the history of ever, moshi moshi (which means as much as "I will speak" or something to that effect, and also only to be used between friends and family... definitely not at work). Last but not least: Kill la Kill is amazing. Unless it's meant to be serious, in which case that would be really... terrible. I'm going with this being a parody for now. Still, will put this on a back burner, too much other stuff to watch, including Stardust Crusaders.

I've been on a martial arts movie thing. The more modern ones, like 2000 and later. Hand to hand, sword, polearms, etc. sequences (am not, however, into USA-style punching/boxing, blargh). In the mood for such visual mayhem I guess. Anyway ... trying to make a habit of exercising my arms etc. when I watch (not just pedaling) because my arms have always been kinda weaksauce and even worse now. I use a long heavy metal pole (maybe four feet long/) and do various arm exercises with it while standing. Maybe I should take up long stick/polearm fighting classes! ...nah, I'd probably just hurt myself. *looks up some millions view YT video on some bo staff techniques ... yup, I'd hurt myself. *

I loaded up Stoneshard today. The game is still in beta, but I haven't played it in awhile, and it has come along nicely. I think this will eventually become one of my favorite RPG's to tool around in. If you haven't checked it out, it is super deep and a bit unforgiving. Ok, super unforgiving.

I just wanted throw out the idea of adding crickets at some point. The sound I think would add tons to the atmosphere at night. I remember camping in my backyard as a kid and it was always louder than during the day and seemed more alive. The addition of the fireflies I think helped that visually, but some crickets would add much to the sound atmosphere. Their jumping would make hunting them a fun challenge. Some cricket armor that maybe added to jump distance and possibly a double jump if you had a full set would be neat. They could perhaps have a sonic attack thats disorienting, i dunno. Also to all the devs. Thank you Thank you Thank you. You have created a beautiful world that is massively fun to play in. It is exceptional work without even being complete yet and I can't wait to see where you take it next. I believe you have a future classic on your hands. I also love that you made it early access and have shown a wonderful commitment to communicating with your fans. I hope more of the industry takes note

Lol... you can also get youself a permanent Spiritshift weapon that way. Unfortunatly the Boar's raw DoT is not tied to the weapon but to the Spiritshift modal itself. But still: cool weapon to have. The Cat's Claws are best imo because they have the same base damage as the others but only 3 secs recovery. The coolest thing is to get the Storm Blight weapons I think. Spiritual Weapons and Reaping Knives won't stay. So far only Enchanted Armory and Spiritshift.