Leaderboard

I think that everything that has to do with contractual obligations can be ignored in this discussion: from Russia's point of view, none of it has any relevance whatsoever. Look at how Russia repossessed (i.e. stole) 400+ Western airplanes after the war began. Look at how Russia has altered the deals with various Western banks & companies after the war began ("I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further") to either prevent them from leaving Russia, or to steal their assets, or both. And so on. Now, please note that this is all I'm saying. I haven't read enough on the topic to have an informed opinion on who blew up the pipes. What I have read has led me to think that some scenarios do indeed look fishy [sic], as you point out. But I think it's also worth pointing out that contractual obligations wouldn't be a concern for Russia; they have demonstrated this repeatedly and reliably. After all, fairly early on in the war, one of the more inglorious things that Russia did was to negotiate, with the International Red Cross, an evacuation route for fleeing Ukrainians -- and it just so happened that the route was also mined, either before, during or after the negotiations.

@Kvellen Thanks for the instant response! I figured it might be as you said. I remember wanting to edit the UI of PoE 1 and finding it very difficult to locate those elements. I did make and publish a mod that replaced the intro movies of that game with nothing but black. I might try and do the same thing here with that title screen. From the image you shared though, it looks like you unpacked the right asset. If you remember which asset file it was please share that info with me.

I can't tell the difference between that and actual Bethesda writing.

Solasta is shaping up to be a pretty good game. The turned based combat is made palatable by the fact that there are not that many encounters. Although the story and quest are pretty simple so far, which may not be a bad thing for this game.

Need to have such robots first, I guess.

@Kvellen I think I found said files or references to them. One of those files is named "MainMenu_BG_Far-sharedassets1.assets-24.png" and I extracted it from this asset file: "...Pillars of Eternity II\PillarsOfEternityII_Data\sharedassets4.assets". Thanks for your help.

Well, now I'll have to post this:

AMD marketing has more than a bit of a habit of doing that. Next up most likely is the RX7600 having 8GB of VRAM after making fun of nVidia for skimping on their RAM.

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/04/30/florida-principal-ousted-over-michelangelos-david-porn-row-visits-statue

From what I remember from digging through the assetbundles the title screen is actually a sort of level made up of a few different images and moving elements. Which makes it very difficult to make adjustments to.

If anyone still thinks, that Russian casualties and UA:RU KIA ratios might be overinflated. By the words of Prigozhin himself, each meter of progress in Bakhmut is made at the cost of 1.25 soldier.

I like to think that she's just a really thorough investigative journalist. She did the leg work. She went around and talked to many people, checked with her sources, and took extensive measurements, then cross-referenced those measurements against a database. It's this kind of in-depth analysis that's been missing. I mean, we get measurables such as 40 yard time, amount of bench press reps, vertical leap, and so on. Those are all well and good, but this dedicated reporter went above and beyond to give us the stat that we really care about.

Hey Kvellen, thanks for theses instructions! I have another question for you. Do you know how to replace the title screen of the game?

In case anyone missed it, OtaKing, who created the excellent TIE Fighter animation released a few years back is working on an Alien tribute: The clear throwbacks to 80's anime a la <<Bubblegum Crisis>> and <<Urusei Yatsura>> have my utmost approval, as does the soundtrack with shades of Chu Ishikawa.

People are woefully unaware of the size of their vehicles aswell. It's very noticeable when people are parking, taking turns or at a meeting spot on a single lane road. I've watched Cleetus McFarlands youtube all day. Made a playlist of all his drag and drive videos and have been drooling over the view on Rocky Mountain race week. Makes me think about getting American Truck Simulator, and wishing there was a Drag and Drive game

The character issues are a concern, but reportedly Jalen Carter has a big I feel that's a lot more important.

I shall repeat it to myself every morning when looking at the mirror.

Personally I take tactical because wizard 2 is so stacked with good defensive spells for a battlemage (mirror image & Arcane Veil) I'm not sure i want to spend one on Infuse when i have the option of tactical barrage.

I asked for Morrowind NPC dialouge. You get what you ask for, it's... pretty terrible "Greetings, traveler. Have you come seeking knowledge? Or perhaps you're looking to trade? Either way, I'm happy to oblige. Just be warned, the roads of Vvardenfell can be dangerous for the unwary. Many dangers lurk in the ash wastes, and there are creatures that even the most skilled warrior would be wise to avoid." "Ah, it's good to see a friendly face. I've been on the road for weeks, and I'm getting tired of these blasted blight storms. It's a harsh land, this Vvardenfell, but there's something about it that keeps drawing me back. Perhaps it's the challenge, or maybe it's the thrill of exploration. Whatever it is, I can't seem to stay away." "I see you're carrying some interesting artifacts there. Care to trade? I have some rare books and scrolls that might interest you. Or if you're looking for something more practical, I have a selection of enchanted weapons and armor. Of course, such things don't come cheap. But then again, neither does survival in this land. It's a dangerous world out there, my friend. Best be prepared."

Thats a ChatGPT reply? I love the last sentence.

I dunno, I don't think it carried from your session While mudcrabs may not be conventionally attractive creatures, they play an important role in their ecosystem. In the real world, they serve as prey for larger animals, and help to keep waterways clean by consuming decaying organic matter. In the Elder Scrolls games, mudcrabs provide a challenge for players and can be a valuable source of resources. It's important to remember that all creatures have a purpose in the world, even if they may not be pleasing to the eye.

BBC - Speedo Mick : Praise for 'fantastic human being' who raised £1m

I just finished The Ultimate. Oh... my... Gaun! SC Bloodmage ubercheese. All filmed. Anyone know if there are still patches going? Big thanks to all the knowledge posted by you guys, I stand on the shoulders of giants.

By the way: the chants that give resistance to whatever can be used to make your party quasi-immune against those afflictions if you use a Troubadour with Brisk Recitation. Every time the chant "hits" your party it will remove 1 tier of affliction that's on your party. So let's say your whole party is enfeebled and the chanter sings "One Dozen Stood" with Brisk Recitation. He will then reduce the enfeeblement to weakened, then after 3 secs that will get reduced to sickened and 3 secs later reduction to nothing. So I like to have those three resistance chants up my sleeve. Not if ability points become scarce, but if there's room I will consider them.

You seems to not understand, that it’s in Russian’s nature to make all these extra hoops for centuries, just to be able to lie to everyone else with strainght face, that it wasn’t them, or all has been done “according to law”. My family experienced all these extra hoops first hand, while we were occupied for 30 years by them, for everyone else, who were lucky to not experience Russian World yet, I really recommend to read or attend some plays written by Pushkin or Dostoyevsky to learn a little bit about true Russian mentality. The best poem to start would be Dostoevsky’s Idiot. https://welovetranslations.com/2022/07/17/whats-the-best-translation-of-the-idiot/ Edit: Yes I know, you have polish herritage, therefore I am little bit of puzzled, that you find it implaussible of how many extra hoops the Russians are wiling to perform, just to be able to divide the populace in the countries, they want to conquer or influence, while doing their best to look innocent in the eyes of their puppets and commrades Edit2: and you are also forgetting, that one of the things they have blown up, was NordStream 2 pipe, which already had zero value during the explosion, as there was no chance for it being used for gas transportation in the next decade or two

Ask ChatGPT about Mudcrabs (ugly creatures)

again, change facts so at uc davis it were a speaker promoting trans rights and equality, but proud boyz, klanzmen or other wackjobs showed up to protest. am having no idea what story you read, 'cause you didn't share, so am not knowing what you deem to be cops censoring, or what amounted to dispersing o' protest, or what were the explanation as to why the cops felt justified in doing so. in any event, if at some point the local police intervened and began dispersing the klansmen protesting a trans speaker invited to uc davis, would you have excused resulting klansmen violence? maybe you would. maybe you believe violence and mayhem is the proper universal response to censorship. it isn't, but maybe that is your belief. even so, am wondering if your indignation is same if is villains such as white supremacists committing violence, eh? btw, IF the local and university cops at the charlie kirk event had dispersed a peaceful protest on a state university campus w/o justification, then am personal able to think o' at least ten excellent lawyers who would take the protester's resulting first amendment case pro bono. however, IF the protesters resorted to violence... furthermore, police busting up a peaceful protest w/o any justification woulda' been even bigger news than the uc davis knuckleheads who got suckered by charlie kirk and his proud boys. "Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring." am able to imagine situations where we would reluctant choose to embrace violence as a form o' protest, but the uc davis situation, even as you describe, is unlikely to satisfy our personal threshold. HA! Good Fun!

knee jerk defense o' serial stoopid 'cause you agree with the viewpoint o' the protesters? ... "CBS Sacramento reported that some protesters reportedly used pepper spray in an attempt to keep would-be audience members out of the building. " the protesters had made threats during the week leading up to the charlie kirk event. as such, no police presence woulda' been idiotic. your feels that violence happened once the police attempted to quell protests is based 'pon? protesters were assaulting those who wished to view the event. protesters broke windows and vandalized property. am gonna suggest it is possible to argue that police did not intervene quick or forceful enough once violence occurred, but somehow you reverse and make the police actions the cause o' protester violence? serious? if the davis protesters had stood outside buildings, chanting their outrage at charlie kirk and the uc davis chancellor, there would have been no story making national news. 'course the proud boys and charlie kirk were much aware just how little it takes to provoke a violent response from young and stoopid in 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/28/us/pittsburgh-student-protest/index.html gen z protesters and a small number o' antifa idiots keep repeating the same mistake. if you are losing a battle o' wits with charlie kirk and the proud boyz, then you are clear doing something wrong. blame on cops, boomers or sunspots ain't helping. gen z woulda' so been triggered by william f buckley. ensuing violence woulda' been okie dokie if cops arrived? in 1963, while john lewis spoke to crowds in washington dc, would you have defended robed klansman heckling and assaulting people attempting to hear the future Congressman speak? doubtful. change facts and make so that at uc davis it were an invited speaker advocating for trans rights recognition and the protesters who eventual engaged in violence were the proud boys. @Chairchuckerwould be defending the proud boys in such a situation? be honest. from mr. lewis' final essay: Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring. defense of self and defense o' others against immediate violence is excuses for violence. the presence o' cops, charlie kirk or michael knowles is so not reasonable excuses for vandalism and violence. btw, am not making some kinda inane equivalency argument. violence from white supremacists in the US is many orders o' magnitude worse than the stick and pepper spray wielding antifa nincompoops or brainless university undergrads. the attack on Congress on january 6 were so not the same as rando george floyd protests in sheboygan. the problem is the young liberal minded folks who see themselves as standing up for Justice while ignoring free speech principles not only fail to recognize the hypocrisy o' their actions, but they is time and again being suckered into the performance art spectacles engineered by the proud boyz and charlie kirk. honest, how stoopid do you need be to keep falling for the same bait?the proud boys set up the situation at uc davis and stanford 'cause they knew how easily provoked is genz and antifa morons. these campus displays is repeated and is engineered purposeful to have substantial cop and camera presence so as to display the hypocrisy and stoopid o' young liberals 'cause then folks like bruce will have ammunition when they engage in false equivalency arguments. btw am applauding young protesters for vocal criticizing individuals such as charlie kirk. maybe ain't a legal duty, but as we observed with book burnings, remaining silent when you see a wrong being committed or ignored is wrong. young protesters should be vocal. would be nice if those same undergrad firebrands bothered to vote too, but baby steps are required. the thing is, once you cross over from peaceful protest to violence, you are trampling on the grave o' folks such as john lewis, and such should not be tolerated. make excuses that you were provoked by the proud boys or police presence is idiotic. gonna say it once more: if you are repeated losing a chess match with the freaking proud boys, you are doing something wrong. fall for the same obvious ruse again and again andagainanadagainanadagainanadagainandagainandagainandagainandagain? that kinda willful stoopid is not forgivable. HA! Good Fun!

hard west 2 is on sale at steam. 50% off. am always waiting at least six months post release to purchase games for which we ain't done the crowd funding thing. gets us a more stable game which is likely encheapened. we intended to purchase hard west 2 earlier this year, but we forgot. now seems like a good time to pull trigger. HA! Good Fun!

Oooh, Wartales incidentally just released on GOG.

Wartales has sure added a lot since I played back in Early Access. The fact that you can set up pitons and climb mountains is a pretty interesting mechanic. My band is pretty strong at level 5-6, and we have one lucky wolf named Fang who has surprisingly survived from the early game. I've buried a lot of animals, so this pup is clearly lucky. I think it might be better than Battle Brothers. It definitely is much deeper. It might not have the same replayability, mostly because of a more set narrative, but it does give you a lot of interesting options on how to construct your warband and still creates some great storylines amongst the team.

How long until Ubisoft fires 2/3 of their staff and has AI make all the copy paste activities on their maps? Would we even notice a difference?

RPG roundtable podcast: Josh Sawyer, Mike Laidlaw, Strix Beltran, Paweł Sasko, and Lis Moberly go deep on writing and playing RPGs | PC Gamer

have finally played a new wotr game deep enough to do all o' act ii with the new companion as well as the act iii ulbrig specific content. quick observations: - the new content is owlcat ordinary which means if you enjoyed wotr, then you will possible grumble 'bout narrative shortcomings or bugs related to the dlc, but such is no worse than the bulk o' what has been previous released. however, a few o' the quests is kinda haphazard and ill-defined; you may feel the need to check your journal to be sure a couple quests is finished, or not. - the only act iii content other than crusade management we completed before exploring gundrun were greengates and the molten scar which had us reach level 11 by a handful o' xp. after completing the act iii ulbrig quests am ~3/4 to level 12; is a fair amount o' content available on decent sized maps. there is more happening in currantglen and gundrun than we expected. the dlc is not just 'bout the shifter class with a wotr companion tacked on for good measure. ulbrig and his relevant maps result in considerable more content than other wotr companions, for better or worse. - is a few munchkin bait l00t items considering the level o' the content. is multiple +6 enhancement gear pieces and those items have bonuses beyond the enhancement. -the crusade upgrades from ulbrig provide your army with new military units but have only accessed infantry and archers 'cause as am having stated, am early in act iii. even so our new default infantry unit is the ulbrig specific houndmasters. - am highly recommending upgrading the phylactery of stevanius (ring) with the convert to force damage option before tackling gundrun. - a merchant in gundrun sells multiple weapons and items which target lycanthropes. am not yet having encountered lycanthropes, so... regardless, am gonna repeat am pleasant surprised by the amount o' new content provided by the dlc. HA! Good Fun!!

This is newsworthy: For the first time in 2 years my GOG Galaxy client managed to update itself and did not force me to download the new version from scratch. Are the GOG people learning to code? Only time will tell.

At least 130 hours. Like @Humanoid said, at this point it is not really worth jumping into EA at this point, though if you really, really want to play it, buing it early will grant you Digital Deluxe upgrade for free. As to game itself, it is complicated. It is less of a Baldur's Gate3 and more of a Divinity: Original Sin2 smashed with 5e D&D with a dash of influence of Dragon Age. So far the result seems rather conflicted. I enjoyed my time with BG3 more than I did D:OS2, but I also found it more frustrating - D:OS2 just wasn't my cup of tea, while BG3 very much could be but than it does something silly. At the very least it is shaping up to be easily the biggest budget proper RPG we ever got.

lamplighters dev diary #5. turn-based combat one aspect we found intriguing in part 'cause o' what is not detailed-- The Stress System Being attacked in combat is stressful. In The Lamplighters League you can use the stress of your enemies to your advantage! But you also have to pay attention to your own Agent’s stress levels as well. Let’s dive into the rules! What is Stress? Every time any unit is attacked, they will accrue a point of Stress. Note: Hits AND Misses both accrue the same amount of Stress. So even missed abilities have some effect! Stress is represented by the pips above the unit’s Health Bars. When a unit reaches maximum Stress, they will Stress Break. Stress Breaking When a unit Stress Breaks and hits max stress, something happens! For Enemies: Some enemies Flee and will cower for a turn. Some enemies go Berserk and attack a nearby target – friend or foe! For Player Agents: Stress Broken Agents will lose 1 AP their next turn. More effects to be revealed later… am getting how stress is a fatigue mechanic, and am curious, but we would like more info. HA! Good Fun!

Solasta has the most fun tutorial with them all in the tavern sharing stories.

I really enjoyed Solasta. It would have been nice if they had the resources to add more game or have a better RNG. But it was one of the most fun DnD experiences I had in a long time.

Got Solasta and Wall World. Very nice of Solasta to just give me the unlocked ability points instead of forcing me to reroll those damn dice. Apart from that didn't get very far yet. Wall World is a sideways Domekeeper but better. The game is 5 bucks and punches above its weight.

Hey, don't know if you are still interested (or on this forum anymore?), but I've figured out a simple way to create such a mod! The following has Photoshop in mind, but this should be doable in GIMP or Photopea as well. Create a new image with a height of 1280 pixels and a width of 2048 pixels. Resized your desired image to fit this. Without changing the width, increase the image height (Image/Image size...) to 1704px. Deadfire stretches out the loadscreen images (likely to scale the image to different sized monitors), so this is necessary to avoid your image looking odd in game. Next increase the canvas height (Image/Canvas Size...) to match the width of 2048px. Fill in the empty space at the top and bottom of your image with black. You should now have a squashed/streched image that is 2048px by 2048px. Save your image somewhere as a .png with the name "generic_load_bg". Make a folder for your mod in the override folder. Inside of the new folder create 2 more folders: One called "gui" and the other "loadscreens". Put your image inside the loadscreens folder, and then place the loadscreens folder inside the gui folder. The default loadscreen should now be replaced by your image. If you want to replace a DLC's loadscreen, name the .png one of the following: Seeker, Slayer, Survivor: “lax01_sss_load_bg" Beast of Winter: “lax02_bow_load_bg” The Forgotten Sanctum: “lax03_fs_load_bg”

Nothing like buying 700$+ of hardware only to have it literally blow up in your face. GG. Edit: Probably best to make something clear for the inevitable TL;DR crowd, the mainboard melting is an ASUS-specific issue, the CPUs dying is not, so if you don't have a mainboard from ASUS, at least "only" your CPU will fry itself and you can still use the mainboard afterwards, and from what one can gather from the affected users, it is not limited to 7800X3D CPUs at all (der8auer has a 7900X that died in this exact same way), they're just more affected than the others. Why would be pure speculation at this point, a follow up video with the analysis from an external lab is coming soon. Either way, AMD, perhaps it is best to not make fun of melting cables next time. Almost enough to make one believe in karma. Edit 2: I remember Steve telling me that AMD said that they're not going to bin lower grade 7950X3Ds as 7800X3D CPUs, would perhaps be interesting to see if that is really the case, because otherwise the higher amount of affected 7800X3Ds could be explained by them being the CPUs that already failed the silicon lottery, combined with board manufacturers setting EXPO values in a way that slowly (or sometimes more quickly) cook your CPU. Never mind the other hilarious bugs that came up, like the failsafe shutdown temperature values not being correct for X3D CPUs (funnily enough, ASUS got that properly, the others... not so much). Some board manufactueres apparently used Palpatine's solution to quickly fix instabilities. Just shoot it with lightning.

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2023-star-wars-jedi-survivor-pc-worst-triple-a-port-of-2023-so-far

It was cancelled. The team is now developing a first person shooter version of Pentiment.

More data mining. Android companion looks to be limited to the Through the Ashes sequel and is an Int-based Bard. There's also reference to "shards", which look to be limited to the DLC. Archetypes continue to be more sp00ky with cannibal Barbarians, daemon Shamans (Owlbrew original), hag Bloodragers, dual-cursed Oracle, heretical Clerics, and a geomancer Sorcerer (owlbrew Original). Handful of new spells as well.

Paradox build your own DLC bundle https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/paradox-dlc-build-your-own-bundle/