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Well, isn't that fun. An hour ago a text message woke me up (it is 07:00 right now). Colleague from work says he's positive. Yay. Luckily we stocked a whole bunch of rapid COVID-19 tests and it came out negative, since my last contact with him was both extended and on Wednesday I figure I'm somewhat safe, but I'll just isolate myself for the time being. Looks like the vaccine actually did its job, who would have thought? Man, really... and I thought I'd get through this crap without having to jab a swab up my nose, which very predictably lead to "some" unpleasantness. It's my usual dirty rotten luck too, having a total of two colleages I come in contact with regularily and one of them gets a breakthrough infection.

“Josh is still make the game he said was making“. sounds a bit like “The Name of the Rose: the RPG”

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Well, this one I barely remembered. Worse, I actually had some images in my head that are not from this anime, despite what I thought. I found it better than Laputa but I agree with @Sarex, there is a point when it kinds of drags on more than it should.

I’m glad to see all of your years reading my posts have not been ill spent! JK!

That's awful. Hope yall come out ok.

Wow, that backyard has the potential to be amazing. Looks like you are hosting the next Obsidian Forumites BBQ, LC.

I don't think I feel quite as strongly about it as Keyrock, but I am of the same mind. Keeping up with PC's as well as costs is just becoming too silly. Not that I ever kept up with PC tech religiously or anything but. Still, I like the ability to mod and use cheats, the ability to have or more easily swap around hundreds of saves, and the video and screenshot capabilities on PC. I'm sure every console will only get better at those things eventually too but ... yeah. I expect to build at least one more PC (or at minimum, just a GPU) to keep up with 4k/60 on "next gen" games but that's still a few years away. After that ... eh ... I don't think I game enough on average anymore to care - especially AAA gaming. Might just go with PS6 by then.

It's nothing fancy but main reason for this house (besides the pool hubby wanted): Big spot for a garden. There's a 2nd covered patio/storage on the house-side, too. ...and could still put a big/long workshop on the other side. Also, outdoor couch and I can sit here with a laptop all day, rain or shine. Maybe I should wall it in and turn it into a "woman cave?" Probably too humid tho. Haha. The actual basic room for my "cave." It's 13-14 feet long. Currently planning for efficiency and function. Think the window wall is going to be all desktop attached to the wall, with an L/desk that sticks out towards the door. I could have four monitors plus the TV! Or two big TV's and two monitors! Hm...needs more thought...must be perfect cause once done it's not changing. Maybe I should make it a U instead. Walking space? I don't need that. Edit: also ... no trees on our side or big street trees. No more tons of raking/being knee deep in leaves. The neighbors have enough greenery to stare at - saw squirrels and lots o' little birds, so they'll be around like I like.

Honestly, it was much worse the first time I had it but it's not exactly pleasant this time around either. Wife got her official positive diagnosis so I'll be surprised if the others don't come back the same. Yes, we're all vaccinated but it was about 6 months ago and I've seen studies saying the efficacy drops a lot around 6 months. I was going to go get my booster shot next week too.

That was the idea, yes. And you're right, it's not just Guard Dog, either - I have seen and personally heard that old "they're the same" line what feels like literally a thousand times over the past ~5 years, a rallying cry for that "ah, **** it" attitude that is so dangerously prevalent in this country. I won't lie, I think Democrats are by and large incompetent at best or self-serving status quo maintainers at worst who either lack the ability or will to actually meaningfully accomplish anything half-decent for anyone, and that really sucks for the literal tens of millions of people in this country that are stuck in terrible dead-end situations without the time, energy, resources, and/or opportunity to realistically be able to make any positive changes, while the majority of our politicians just yuck it up. I don't want to support almost nothing changing, but that's the awful choice I find myself desperately clinging to in the face of the alternative that we have seen. And if you really think filling up every single government position with the most cartoonishly incompetent and awful people for each job is still perfectly well and good after the absolute circus that we were forced to endure where almost every institution, tradition, and value that we as people were supposed to hold dear was brutally violated over a period of four years capped off by our president provoking an illegal takeover of our capitol while simultaneously filling up both our courts and the Pentagon with hacks all in a increasingly pathetic attempt to cling to power...ay, karamba - I don't even know what to say to you. Did he need to have actually succeeded for people to have finally noticed that things are not just "same old politics"? No, I will not - cannot - see both sides as "being the same" until at least the worst of that rot is cut off, crushed, and finally burned for what it is. When and if that happens, I will be more content to let that old "they're the same" line slide. Rome wasn't built in a day...but it also didn't fall in a day, either - these things take their toll.

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-publishes-list-of-incompatible-games-with-alder-lake-(due-to-drm).html

There is something positively sublime about the silhouette of trees against a twilight sky long after sundown as the sound of day birds change to the cries of night birds and crickets. This is something so few people get the opportunity to enjoy and appreciate. I thank God every time I do.

Seeing that Grounded has already included some cool and less well known creatures makes me really happy. The game is a perfect place to introduce fascinating non-vertebrate animals. Here are some ideas I got so far: Animals Hydras. They are basically tiny anemone that grow in freshwater. Their tentacles have special cells that shoot poisonous harpoons when triggered. It's possible to craft ropes that can stick to tadpoles out of these. Millipedes. While not aggressive themselves, when threatened, they can secrete cyanide to protect themselves. Imagine dosing a decoy with such poison to kill a wolf spider! Fleas. Mentioned in a previous post about the sandbox biome. I want to add that, since fleas have these tiny gears on their legs for synchronizing jumping, you can craft some gear-powered(?) system if you harvest enough of them. Planarians. The land planarian is pretty disturbing. They wrap around their prey and pull out their stomach and digest the prey alive. You can exaggerate their regenerative ability, and make it so that if you slash one with an axe it would split into many smaller bug, up to 273 pieces. Velvet worm. ( Honestly this might overlap with the web-shooting orb weavers. But they look so weird and cool, and they're of their own animal phylum! Earthworms that create tunnels you can explore. Leeches Snails and slugs Horsehair worms. When the heavily asked mantis prayer is added, these parasites could be a welcomed surprise to come out of the ravenous insect you're fighting with. Plants (I'm not a plant person so thoughts are limited) Garden balsam: they have exploding seeds that can be used as grenades Lamb's ear: Offers a warm-fuzzy coat. Nepenthes: If you dare venture down its sac, you can find a rich reservoir of bug parts, provided that you have a way out. Bladderwort: sucks player inside its trap pouch if triggered. Many plants have long hairs that make it difficult for insects to climb on. When more realistic climbing behavior is introduced for the insects, these plants can serve as a defensive building materials for the base. Protists While the shrunk size of the protagonists offers great opportunity to explore the microscopic world, I think most protist bugs are still too small to interact meaningfully with the player. A lot of interesting ciliates will be no bigger than the size of a pebblet. It is possible though to build the visuals so we can see how the water is thrived with planktonic creatures. Maybe the devs can create some area rich in diatoms, which players can harvest in bulk to get glasses for building or diatomaceous earth for water-filtration. (Can you build halteres for the mosquitos?)

So, umm, I don't... What do you say about a game like that? I can't blame our defense, what are they supposed to do when they spend the entire game on the field because the offense can't do anything? There's having a bad game, that happens, then there is this. Our offense just collectively took a **** on the field.

it should be changed to holding down b to remove blue prints. having it as a tap just means i unintentionally remove blueprints i've placed. it's super annoying and i can't fathom why it's like this. it really sucks to accidentally remove a blueprint that was one item away from being finished.

Oh wow, I completely missed that there was a trailer for Stone Ocean. And I just learned it will release on Netflix next damn month. Great news.

I love the imagery of Nausicaa, and the themes are good. The plot and dialogue...are alright, I guess. Always felt like it was a film that had some...odd scene timing that makes a lot of scenes feel a bit unnatural, plus some general pacing and character issues/deficiencies that you don't really find in other classic Ghibli films. Strangely, I like it a lot more than Laputa, but I think Laputa is probably the better-constructed film.

While the effectiveness against infection drops off a cliff after a few months protection against serious infection- hospitalisation/ death- is largely maintained. Kind of ironic though, Pfizer has by far the worst drop off of the 2 shot vaccines- a lot worse than the Moderna mRNA vaccine too- so much so that it ends up worse than Astra Zeneca after a few months.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's: Finale This fully turns into an animated, non-interactive JRPG by the end. Fate reappears after pushing through her perfect dream world and she and Nanoha fight the Book of Darkness long enough for Hayate to reboot its operating system. She decouples the defense program and the Belkan Knight programs from the system, restoring them and summoning the final boss fight, a properly JRPG looking something that's like a cross between a tentacle hentai monster and an angel from NGE, just with less intricate art. This looks a bit like Pharao 90, doesn't it? By the way Fate, Cloud called, he wants his sword back... Hello, I'm the secret boss of Final Atelier: Fantasy Trails in the Fire Sky XXI: DARKNESS RISING. Unlike most JRPG final bosses, the fight is over relatively quickly, if you can even call it such. I'm not sure if they ran out of time for a "suspenseful" action sequence or if the writers realized that they don't have the time to waste on an entire episode of fighting this thing, so they just proceed to blast it out of existence with the most ludicrous attacks imaginable, then teleport its remains into space where the Space Cop battle cruiser is using its Sivar phase-transit main cannon (actually in universe it's called Arc-en-Ciel, but it is what it is ) to obliterate the protection program. Once that is done the final episode of the season begins, with the now rebooted Tome of the Night Sky, redubbed Reinforce by Hayate turns out to be a total bummer because JRPGs always end on a bittersweet note. She says that the protection software is already rebooting and there's only one thing to be done to stop it for good: Destroy the Tome of the Night Sky once and for all, leading to a protracted and teary goodby between characters that literally just met each other half a day ago. With Alisa/Arisa and Suzuka having seen Fate and Nanoha fight, they decide to come clean and the episode quietly fades into an epilogue where they're properly confused and shocked looking as Fate and Nanoha recount the events of the last two seasons, Nanoha's family reacting in an equal manner to having actual aliens sitting at home (good thing they decide to not have Yunno around, that would be really awkward to explain). The episode fast forwards six years to now ninth graders Hayate, Nanoha, Fate, Alisa and Suzuka going off to school. Captain Mercury quit her job and joined Nanoha's family after adopting Fate, Chrono is now captain of the Space Cop battlecruiser, there are small hints at a romance between Nanoha and Yuuno (I bet that got a whole lof of Fate x Nanoha shipper's knickers in a bunch). Fate is a junior enforcer with the Space Cops, Nanoha a combat instructor and Hayate and her Knights are still on probation and community service. Overall, I was positively surprised by the second season. It still has the silly fanservice (and there's a scene where the tentacle monster Book of Darkness wraps its tentacles around Fate) but it doesn't suddenly vector off into lolicon territory. Still, it has not much going for it to really recommend it. If you have seen at least one other magical girl anime series and played any JRPG before you don't really need to see this. Props to the writers for being able to actually fool me with their Tuxedo Mask. Never expected that to not be Chrono's father. In all fairness though, what's actually going on is pretty much an asspull without really any prior setup. The third season has 26 episodes, and according to wikipedia... is going to be a bit more action with more team based battles and less character rivalry. Now isn't that great. Yeah... and twice as long to boot. Yay... everything is awesome... Everything is awesome!

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-11-04/study-shows-dramatic-decline-in-effectiveness-of-covid-19-vaccines Bruce, here's an article that references one of the studies I was talking about

Yeah it's really good so far, I enjoyed it a lot.

- I experienced the behaviour during a playthrough. - I read about this problem from several forum users. - We discussed it here and for example @Elric Galadincluded a fix in his Balance Polishing mod. - it should get included in the Community Patch mod as well (hello @MaxQuest). Maybe it already is in the newest draft? Besides that I think I don't exaggerate or brag if I say that the regulars here combined do know more about the game mechanics than the devs themselves nowadays. It takes some time to get answers but the subforum here is certainly a more reliable and also self correcting source of information than the in-game descriptions are. That's because over the many patch cycles abilities were tweaked (which is good) but faulty descriptions often weren't changed accordingly (which is not so good). Partially because pieces of description texts are auto-generated so maybe Obsidian thought that would update itself splendidly (it didn't always). As I said: expect not too precise or sometimes even wrong descriptions. It's a game with loads of content - and also some minor glitches were found after the final patch was released, so Obsidian couldn't change that anymore. Nobody here really knows whether Spirit Frenzy or Spirit Tornado work as intended. But one of them has a small "bug". I can only give you my personal assessment. Here's a small history of Blood Frenzy and Spirit Frenzy: 1. At release Blood Frenzy (and its upgrade Blood Storm) only worked with weapon crit rolls - Spirit Frenzy on the other hand worked with all hit rolls, but Spirit Tornado didn't (it worked like Blood Frenzy/Blood Storm: only with weapon hits/crits). I guess at that time Obsidian considered Spirit Frenzy to be the buggy ability (well not really bugged, but implemented with a different mechanic). 2. But most players said they really liked the effect of Spirit Frenzy; most didn't take Blood Frenzy because Spirit Frenzy was just better in most situation/for most builds, while not being overpowered. Just a nice source of synergy in most builds. 3. Blood Frenzy and Blood Storm got changed so that they worked with all crit rolls (like Spirit Frenzy but only crits, not hits+crits). So now players can use it with spells, chants etc. which is cool and balances it with Spirit Frenzy. Now it's really a tough decision which one to pick (which is good). But unfortunately Spirit Tornado didn't get that change... I suspect Obsidian just forgot - or didn't even realize - that Spirit Tornado didn't work like Spirit Frenzy. So they forgot to alter it like they altered Blood Frenzy/Storm. At least that's the most logical explanation for me personally. But it's not that I know what really happened and why. What you can do now if you really want to keep the stagger with all hit rolls: - not pick Spirit Tornado - install a mod that fixes Spirit Tornado The last one is not possible when playing on a console iirc. Have fun and don't hesitate to ask. It may take some time but you will get an answer from somebody here.

Just watched the first 3 episodes of that LoL / Arcane show on Netflix. As someone who knows nothing about LoL, it's pretty good so far. Definitively will continue with it.

Unless something big directly changes or happens in our ever so small personal universes, nothing is really worth worrying about. Both sides are the same. There's nothing you can do about any of it, so why worry? Both sides are the same. Just kick back, relax, and enjoy the fireworks - it's not like any of this matters! Both sides are the same. Only worry about yourself and your own. Both sides are the same. Do and say anything no matter how reprehensible it may be as long as it's legal and they're paying you for it - it's not as though you have any personal responsibility for your actions. Both sides are the same. They are all corrupt anyways, why support or believe in anyone or anything at all? Both sides are the same. I'll fight, maim, and possibly kill anyone who infringes on me. Both sides are the same. The entire country was going to collapse sooner or later anyways. Both sides are the same. How in the world did things get so bad, where did we go so wrong? Both sides are the same. They are all the same! Both sides are the same. Well, what they did may have direct consequences for you, but it doesn't really matter to me, so... Both sides are the same. Both sides are the same. Both sides are the same.

... so strange. during his presidency, trump did illegal over and over and over again. go back through our old posts and reference how many times we observed that trump were doing were illegal, but that nobody were stopping him. doesn't matter if something is technical illegal if there is no way to stop save with impeachment and trial conviction. sometimes it feels like a majority o' people were not paying attention during the four years o' the trump Presidency. HA! Good Fun!

I actually start up theHunter Call of the Wild some nights and jump to the African map just to have it as background sounds while I fall asleep Not today, but yesterday I went to the garage to fix a missing bolt on my cars exhaust and the valve cover gasket. I managed to break the boots latch. It's a sedan. FML.

bruce, it happened at the US freaking Capitol, while Congressmen and the Vice President were present, and vulnerable. there were an effort, admitted disorganized, to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from 45 to 46. quixotic, unlike any riot we might care to analogize, this one had an actual authority figure, but ultimately that authority figure were simultaneous under a duty to protect and defend those persons and the institution under attack? trump not only instigated the insurrection, but he refused to take action to defend the Constitution, Congressmen, police officers and civilians at the Capitol that day. so not like any other US protest in living memory. "what if Pence,"... and is multiple nightmare inducing ways to end that query. what if a Congressman had been killed? what if the situation had escalated and Trump had declared martial law? what if... the fact you and others frequenting this board do not recognize the significance o' January 6, do not realize just how unprecedented were the events o' the day and just how easily the outcome coulda' been worse but for luck and the actions o' a handful o' people, is... disquieting. aside: anybody who ever used TDS w/o being ironic previous to january 6 should be embarrassed and they deserve whatever ridicule and mockery is heaped 'pon them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/warnings-jan-6-insurrection/?itid=hp-top-table-main

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Stardust Crusaders 1-6 I've been watching this over the last few days. I think it has a similar problem as Phantom Blood, in that the protagonist isn't particularly interesting and gets overshadowed by the villain. But where Johnathan was just boring....Jotaro is an ****. It does benefit from a larger cast of JoJo friends and much more insane villains per episode, Tower of Gray and Dark Blue Moon are more memorable than the majority of mooks that got blasted with Hamon. I didn't know there was a movie. I'll have to check that out sometime, along with Violet Evergarden.

I idly browsed through the Steins;Gate wikipedia page. It sort of told me that critics think I am wrong: As usual, the first half, criticised for it's slower pace, apparently, is what I liked the most (overall, not single scenes, the best ones were near the end, before everything went back to being super fast paced time travel madness), at least until Okarin became intolerable, and even Mayuri started being, well, odd. I mean, odder than usual with her cosplay stuff. Anyway, so for no particular reason at all, I ended up watching: Steins;Gate: The Movie − Load Region of Déjà Vu Yeah, so that is the actual title of the film. It picks up one year after the series ends, and it begins with everyone being terrible as per the series. Kurisu comes back to Japan after being a year in the US, Okarin pretends to not care but secretly plans a welcome back party for Kurisu, Kurisu complains that he didn't bother to write her even once in that year but then doesn't care and goes straight back to blushing whenever she interacts with him causing the others to call her a tsundere... again... been there, done that. Daru calls people B-tards and realfags and plays hentai games, Mayuri is her usual, loveable if a bit slow self, and I was already dreaming up a post where I endlessly complained about the film being just as awful a continuation as the Love Live! movie was (same writer, after all). Then the plot kicks in, and it is even flimsier than that of the original series and makes even less sense. Basically, warning, real spoilers in that tag: Then something magical happens. Everyone in the film suddenly starts acting like real people, except for the parts where Feyris is around. She's as annoying as usual, and nyans up the place really hard, but she has like five minutes of screentime and it barely matters. With the characters suddenly behaving normally, the interactions start being great, the dialogue is fine and it really is a neat film, in the end. It ends, of course, with them being as stupid as they ever were, but I can let that slide, it's just the final scene of the film and a minute or so long. The film is, by far and large, what the series is when it focuses on Kurisu and Okabe behaving like actual people, talking to each other, and accepting each other's quirks. If you're like me and thought Kurisu sewing the hole in Okabe's lab coat and them just talking to each other was one of the highlights of the series, then... definite recommendation. Very much worth watching.

Some are worse than others. I'm pretty sure there are posts where I wrote Fujikata instead of Fujitaka when talking about Sakura's father. Yuzuriha from X was a huge issue too, and even though I've rewatched 20 episodes of Attack No. 1 I still can't remember half of the team's names, but they don't really matter anyway, it is mostly about Kozue, Midori, Mr. Hongo and Tsutomu... *shrug* Binge watching shorter series is also rather bad for character name retention unless the series was particularily memorable for some reason. Madoka's character names weren't an issue, and neither were Violet Evergarden's (but those weren't Japanese). Blood-C on the other hand, yikes. Saya, Fumito, Nene and Nono (the twins) and that's about it. The others? Yeah, nah. It's kind of odd, I can find 5 year old posts based on sentences I remember verbatim, but I can't for my life remember EmoMcEdgelordface's name right now. Gotta look that up. Shinichirō. Yeah, okay, now I'm not even sure anyone used that name. *shrug* No, not with Tomoyo. Toya and Yukito address each other without honorifics, I think (not 100% certain). I also don't remember if Toya ever calls Sakura by name instead of, well, just saying kaiju. Odd. Does he? Crystal is so bad it hurts. I'm not sure what's worse, Crystal or Clear Card. Hm. Why do all my favorite franchises go down in flames like that?

IMO, level 9 Blessing of Wael on priests should be changed to foe only for the counter-attack effect. Otherwise a lot of casters will constantly get hit by the effect due to friendly fire, e.g. standing in a friendly druid's Tanglefoot.

Sweden is looking to forbid mining aswell, because of the greenhouse effects. Funny how they don't use this arguement against the stock market, but oh well...

https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2021/10/10/greece-fake-vaccinations-water-real-vaccine/ Lmao

I can't remember if this has been shared here before, so...

Pfizer antiviral slashes COVID-19 hospitalizations Sounds like the medical community is starting to get a toolset of treatments that will significantly reduce hospitalization. Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel? Or is that a train heading our way?

With the exception of love making, I agree.

*looks up Elden Scrolls* ...hmm, Dark-Souls is often referenced. Ugh (for me). But it looks nice. Maybe there will be a wemod or other cheats. ...if it is "Dark Souls like" then it would feel odd if it's too open world ala Skyrim, I'd agree. That said, it could be more akin to Tales of Arise (except somewhat more expansive so you can showcase leaping off cliffs with a horse) ... where areas feel open world-ish while you're in them, but is still very linear (a lot of that scenery looks like inaccessible backdrop, tbh) with a lot of loading screens and separated areas etc. ...on Steam's page: the game supports a unique asynchronous online element that allows you to feel the presence of others. ...Death Stranding like? You'll see signs of others horses or trails or camping or who knows what? Will it help you out in any way like someone can leave small gifts for other players to find/use, or just there visually?

Hm, just saw they they've made a second season of Blood & Treasure and it should be showing before the end of the year. Interesting. The first season was a fairly self-contained pulp adventure story of treasure hunters, terrorists, conspiracies, nazis, and curses as a former FBI agent turned archeological recoverer teamed up with his ex, an art thief to chase down the main bad guy. I'm curious to see how they'll try to carry it on.

Open-world is this concept that sounds good but rarely turns out interesting. If you let players to do anything at any point and go anywhere it's difficult to create something worth doing or experiencing - story wise you can't create a good one, as you have little control over story progression - a good story has to have arcs and developement and how do you create that stuff, if everyplayer can experience story in a different order (see Deadfire)? Gameplay wise - it's all about building complexity. You can't do that if you have no control over content. There is a reason, I think, why open-world games tend to have a depth of a puddle. And if you have progression system: how do you make sure that no matter where player goes the content will be sufficiently easy/challenging? And as stunning as open-world can be for first couple hours the spell quickly wanes as we realise how static the world is, how repetitive activities are, and one just wishes he could get to interesting stuff quicker. For example I prefered Metroidvenia like, developing world of Arkham Asylum over either of it's "open world" sequels, which felt more artificial and more static to me. So I like games which make you FEEL like you can go anywhere, but generally not open world - in that regard first half Dark Souls1 was all that it needed to be. There are open world games that I did enjoy: Witcher3, Gothic1&2, New Vegas. I do feel that while set in the open world, those games are more linear in nature, with open world being "a stage" rather then game itself. And there are sandbox games like Mount&Blade, but I think their nature is a bit different then your ususal Open World. There are also Metroidvanias - I tend to like those. So in case of Elden Ring, I am asking myself: what positive thing will be added to Dark Souls formula by going open world? Nothing comes to mind as of now, but I was sceptical about WItcher3 and it turned out to be the best in the series.

Honestly, Metroid games don't really fit that description well, they're not bullet hell-y. There are of course some regular enemies that fire projectiles at you, but they are few and far between. There are usually a few boss fights that get a little bullet hell-y like Mother Brain every time she makes an appearance, Phantoon, and in Metroid Dread some of the later central unit battles have a bunch of projectiles flying at you, but those CU fights are so easy you can mostly tank the damage and just unload on the central unit. The irony is that later in Metroid games you don't generally do a lot of shooting. I mean you can, if you're dead set on it, but once you have speed booster and screw attack you just run or spin jump your way through regular enemies and even some bosses. You don't need to stop to fight regular enemies once you have screw attack, you just go. Samus Aran's greatest weapon is her mobility, which is why Super Metroid and Metroid Dread are easily the best games in the series, because they have really good, fluid movement and tight controls. As an aside, I think it's bonkers that speedrunners already have Metroid Dread any% down to 1:15 and 100% down to about 2 hours. I just spent 19 hours beating the game. Granted, I did 100% and I'm a very slow gamer.

Although I think there's more than just her now...