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In a first for me, I am thrilled to report that one of my bird houses has produced a second nesting pair of this season. The first pair produced two chicks and then everyone moved out (I think) and now a new pair (I think) has moved in. I often wonder if the same birds come back but its impossible to differentiate between sparrows and Ive got a lot of them around here.

Played and finished Avowed. Pretty good game overall, would give it a 7/10 "Good". I'd also probably pick up a sequel, depending on where they intend to go with it (there is plenty of the living lands we haven´t been to, certainly would not mind seeing more of it), though likely not if they're going to charge 70EUR again. Forced dodge/parry based combat are not really my thing and just getting out of the way by just sidestepping an attack not being a real option kind of annoyed me. Aggro rules, if there are any, are rather opaque. There really did not seem to be any consistency on who mobs focus on. Even if you're in another room there´d be one that magically would chase you down to beat your skull in. Anyway, it obviously wasn't enough of a bother for me to not finish the game, but expletives were used at time. I thought the overall story was intriguing, though I do feel they dropped a bit too much information too early, by the end of the first area, if you're a bit of a completionist, you pretty much know the gist of what is going on and it feels as if the rest of the game just fills in the outline. The Scatterscarp major decision kinda felt icky to me, especially a scholar PC and/or Giatta should've been able to give more insight as to the consequences of one of the choices. It just felt like the devs were actively trying to rope you into a specific decision. The whole political angle to things, on the other hand, felt like it turned out a lot more black and white than I had hoped, which was a bit of a shame. Endgame choice While you appear "stuck" with your companions I did enjoy the ability to "agree to disagree" with them. That said there were, especially later in the game, some jarring inconsistencies in their reactions, where they'd praise you for something when it is happening and then scold you when talking about it in camp, or vice-versa. There was also the one quest near the end that made absolutely zero sense (the one with the stolen books in the archives) as you're given absolutely zero context so you're just making a decision blindly resulting in companion reactions that entirely out of left field. Thankfully that was the exception. Anyway, enjoyed my time with the game, would recommend (but not at the launch price). Aside from that I played through what is available of Subnautica 2 so far. Mostly it is more Subnautica, so if you didn´t like the prior ones, well, don't bother, but if you did, good times! The one thing that sort of annoyed me is the amount of hostile wildlife compared to the first one(s). I feel it cheapens the experience. It's a bit hard to explain, but feeling vulnerable and avoiding enemies as you didn´t know how dangerous they actually were felt like a big part of the earlier games. Having bits taken out of you on the regular kinda makes it less scary, if that makes sense? Curious to see how the game develops but they're off to a good start at least.

World Cup Tourists Meet A*M*E*R*I*C*A

Happy father's day everyone. I took the family to Disneyland last week. It was expensive, but the crowds were light on 2 of the 3 days. The Star Wars area is amazing and I hung out there as much as possible. We hadn't been in a decade, so I am glad I got it in with them before they become full adults.

Are Scottish soccer fans drinking all of the beer in Boston? The Tartan Army is drinking the place dry.

Some US FIFA humor

It turned into quite a day for the big name goal scorers.

Hi Folks. I’ve been working on a Text-to-Speech Accessibility mod for Pillars of Eternity and just released version 1.3, adding support for 22 languages across 80 countries worldwide. Video Demo of Mod: https://youtu.be/Jn_OwYzoSZ4 It reads most of the game’s unvoiced text aloud in real time (dialogue, journal, tooltips, UI, etc.), basically making it feel much closer to a fully voiced RPG. Originally built for accessibility (dyslexia), but it works really well for general play too if you’d rather listen than read walls of text. The mod uses a Windows SAPI speech bridge to give a plug-and-play solution. NEW Features in v1.3 include: Added varied NPC voices: each NPC gets its own voice from a pool, in barks and dialogue. The same NPC stays consistent across save/reload, and NPCs near each other won't share a voice. Uses your better neural voices and skips the old robotic and child ones. Added 22-language support: pick the language of your game text so non-English (Cyrillic, Greek, accented Latin, etc.) is read correctly, with a button to auto-detect the game's language and a hint when the selected voice can't pronounce it. Added separate toggles to turn off reading of hover tooltips, the journal, and chapter intros on their own. Fixed neural/online voices starting silently on the first line of a session; voices are now warmed up when the game loads. Fixed long barks getting cut off before they finished speaking. Fixed crafting success/error messages and stronghold adventure reports, ignoring their auto-read toggles. Would love any feedback or bug reports 👍 If you try it and find it useful, I’d really appreciate an endorsement on Nexus as well.

Norway fans making a row in New York...

^ I'd guess a lot of people are still on rotating IP's vs. static. Don't know how prevalent that is now, but it used to be common. We're always on a static IP because we demand/pay a tad extra for multiple static IP's, but a lot of "packages" don't work that way. Although I agree once per session should be enough. Anyway, I get that the bot traffic can slow/clog down site speed, if you're getting tons of them all loading every page constantly. But yeah - I got the message while logged in once when clicking a thread and once when editing a post. On my tablet where I only lurk/never log-in, it's pretty much every single time I click a thread, a sub-forum, anything. Click, checkmsg, read, click, checkmsg. On the bright side, apparently I'm definitely not a bot. Phew.

NZ might win this. Egypt, like Salah, are past it EDIT - This aged well.

if iran have nuke before start of this year the entire world wouldn't need to suffer in the last 4 month it is in the best interest of global commerce and majority of population that iran have nuke while vassal of usa remain belligerent

^I was in Anaheim at the Space Tech Expo 2026 a couple weeks ago and my hotel was directly across the street from one of the Disneyland entrances. Every night at 9:30 they put on a hell of a fireworks show!

The Germany vs. Ivory Coast game was fun, but unusual. Like the players were almost scattered all over the field and it was a constant back and forth.

It's annoying when you are logged in too. Can you not log ip addresses and add them to a whitelist? The site is already slow, this is just adding to the pain.

Turkey is one of those moments where you save scum in FM

It feels the same to me. The gameplay (the way the guns shoot, the gun types and PC movement) and level design are very similar, even the enemies are similar. Saying that it's been a long while since I played Gears of War.

I suppose both have chainsaw attached to a more conventional weapon. And I suppose Space Marine could also be described as third person cover shooter, assuming the Marine is also the cover. 😁

I completed all Kings Quests from 1-6 It was fun. I did use guides for about 30% of most of the games because I didn't have the interest to spend hours trying to find some random Island or somehow know a whale is suppose to swallow you so you can find a critical item But as I mentioned a great nostalgic experience Im now playing Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened. Its an adventure, mystery game with a horror Lovecraftian theme Im enjoying it, it took a bit of time to understand how Holmes is suppose to find evidence and progress the story around clues but now I understand all that Im making progress on the dark narrative Its the first Sherlock Holmes game I have ever played

State of emergency in Boston. The city is running out of beer 😎

7 Days to Die has released 3.0-experimental build for us to look at. There are 50ish more POI's, probably other changes. The "big" thing however is the game now has about 100 "sandbox" settings/options for players to fiddle with. Maybe half the small things I'd .xml-edit myself are part of those options, meaning less .xml-editing for me. Like, can turn the "heat" feature completely off, or make it so only "normal" level zombies spawn, none of the overtuned sci-fi zombies. While I love having lots of options, 100 of them unfortunately leads me to analysis paralysis. What do I change? Is that the right setting for what I want done? Is 125% ok, or should it be 150%, or 75%. And ofc, bugs. At least you can save presets so once you find a few combos you like, you can just load the preset. I've barely even play-tested it tho, because the amount of change setting, test, change setting, test is overwhelming. It almost makes me just want to leave it "default" and just do the .xml edits I'm already familiar with. Haha. EDIT: when 3.0 goes stable tho, I may save a copy of it. It may be the last version I care to deal with.

Kaja Kallas is in Thiel's "Eyes wide shut" club of terrible, awful people I chortled

England v Croatia was the best game so far of the WC, both teams can be proud of there performance. Where have we seen 4 goals been scored by halftime? The 2 goals Croatia scored were very impressive and there goalkeeper needs a medal, he stopped a lot of attempts But England deserved to win, when they got the 3rd goal early in the second half they were dominant going forward Definitely an exciting game where both teams performed ⚽

I've always avoided fighting the bigger wildlife in the first games, but it is kind of unavoidable in this one. We'll see where they go with it, I suppose, currently they feel more like a nuisance than a threat, which does not seem ideal if you are trying to create a tense atmosphere. Familiarity indeed plays a significant role. I'd be extremely impressed if they manage to recapture that feeling from the first game, but I consider it rather unlikely and am certainly not banking on it.

Finished Chaos Gate Demon Hunters. I liked it overall, there was enough there to pull me towards the ending. Although I rushed through the last part of it and skipped some available missions that showed up. Missed the 500 days achievement by a couple of days, but apart from that nothing else that I really wanted to do. Could have gotten that too if I didn't prolong the game to get some upgrades, but w/e... I don't see the complaint that there is not enough enemy variety, but I will complain about the boss fights. They are ass and don't feel like bosses at all. I played on normal, but I still should not be able to kill them before they get their turn. They had the idea with the last boss, which was damage gated. So that took some time at least, but it wasn't particularly challenging. Yeah, they sort of seem to not know what they want with the threat mechanics. They did say they plan to expand on it and make it more interesting but so far I agree that it's a step down from the first part. Although I will say that the first part may have been better in that regard simply because it was new and people were interacting with it for the first time. Here, in part 2, people already know what to expect so the feeling of see it for the first time is lost.

So, how do you spin that to be better than what Obama achieved with no war? Even managing to get an explicit no toll on the straits provision isn't exactly victory, just not an abject defeat. No wonder Trump seems genuinely peeved with Netanyahu.

Messi should've been sent off But horrible refereeing all around

I'm looking forward to England v. Croatia today; it's a potentially solid matchup. I guess we'll see. Congrats to the GOAT yesterday; man, Messi still (almost) plays like he's under 30. At least against Algeria.

Still Here! Also the pillars Reddit is pretty active too with Boeroer and others responding there often. I played a full turn based run through last and it’s so refreshing returning for RTWP this time. I just picked up Vatnir (my favorite character!) and am tackling the beast of winter with a wonderfully fun party. 1) sc troubadour bc I want to see the dragon summon 2) rekke monk fighter - sturdy and reliable 3) Maia doing the pin down poet job proning everyone with arbalest 4) vatnir zealot blasting away with scepters 5) Tekehu theurge spamming heals and foe only aoes. EKERA! long live Deadfire!! I’ll keep replaying it every year it’s just the best. If you’re looking for other games I do recommend darkest dungeon 1 and 2! Great turn based fun and the only games I’ve spent as much time on as pillars.

My interest in English football is probably limited to how Liverpool will fare under Iraola. I was a bit of a fan when Klopp managed them because their games were always interesting whether winning or losing 😝 Edit under Slot they went from heavy metal football to snooze ball and I lost interest 😞

Yeah, France shifted out of fourth gear for the second half. There have been some scorching shots thus far.

NZ - Iran was a fun match, even if some poor defending

NZ top of our group? Say the line, Donald. Entertaining game and nice to have one where both sides were clearly trying to win, rather than just not lose.

Japan vs. Netherlands was a fun game; Sweden vs. Tunisia not so much. Ecuador seemed to run out of steam at the end vs. Cote d'Ivory, and they paid the price. I don't see much to look forward to with Group G or H today. This World Cup has perhaps 16 teams too many; the contests would be more engaging if they cut down on the number of participants. But I suppose as long as fans keep flocking to the games, they'll keep expanding it. Superficially, the throw-in rules change seemed like a good one, but I suspect that players will now simply not head for the sideline until the team is deployed.

The title should be obvious. I included very few screenshots related to the companions and a lot related to various unexpected or amusing situations. The ratio is probably the opposite. From the 2nd/3rd area, I had to turn the FSR on and it had some sort of sharpening built-in. I like the armour design. Freedom. Kind of. The loading screens look good. Somehow the melee party members manage to hit the Lookout Monkey. Can't beat the skill. The Knightess. Just a random area. The game is a bit rigid with traversal and, while it looks nice on the screenshots, the only way to navigate is with the Tracking vision on (the screenshot above). The boss I have ~140 screenshots on Steam (more locally) and I will try to share them here. Uxantis Olima Peren The Mid-game Spoiler-land Post-mid-game Our talking-tree god is the best god. It offends my sensibilities - these are not machetes. The Expedition 33 reference. The Prince of Persia reference. This is a kukri, not a saber. Stealth All 11 busts. Not the most interesting collectible. End-game

Went to see Project Hail Mary in a theater in San Fran. Then drove back. Had dinner some random diner on the way back. Quite a drive for a movie, but got me out and I feel a tad better. Hubby's currently unable/unwilling to do anything like that still (back) so I'm going to have to learn to do some activities alone. Which sucks imo. When is that surgeon going to call us.

Hitman Absolution isn't too bad, not all that Hitman feeling though. Seems they watched too much Tarantino when making this

While I don't know how to export the templates I use (AI Scripts), it might also be for the best since I'm not very good at it. That said, making changes to builds and AI behavior might be a good part of the fun, as you can feel the upgrades taking form and your expectations adjusting each level. A couple general ideas: Eder: I usually go Fighter/Rogue (Swashbuckler) Multiclass with lots of Deflection, Riposte, and very simple scripts: (i) activate Vigorous/Refresh Defense at 90% HP with a long CD, and Unbending at 75% somewhat timed with the duration; (ii) Activate Disciplined Strikes when not Perception-Inspired if at least 3 Discipline; (iii) Finishing Blow enemies below 50%. Maia: I mostly run Ranger/Rogue (Scout) with "The Red Hand" (two barrel arquebus from Delver's Row), casting Marked Prey (or For The Hunt) on (Caster/Light Armor priority), then casting Blind/Cripple/Wounding on marked target if at least 3 class resourced. Finishing Blows for targets above 25% and below 50% (as to avoid waste). She's my eliminator. Pallegina: I usually pick Herald, select the songs and the default "Cautious Paladin" and "Offensive Chanter". She's my autopilot among autopilots. I throw some auras on her and hope for the best. I once exchanged her for the N'gati's Chosen (whose name eludes me now), and it was nice putting him up with Foe-AoE-Only casts and some healing. Most recommend single classes for Xoti (Priest), Aloth (Mage) and Seraphen (this one is more divided and the one I use the less). I multiclass because I like the "autopilot" appeal of martials. Xoti in my plays is a mix of a "Mortar Monk" (2min of this forum and it will blow your mind, alongside with your enemies; a real piece of a build by Boroer). She doesn't get all the blasting power or stats as the actual Mortar Monk and you waste her individual kit. On the other side, she gets absolute AOE/Duration for her spells, without getting in too close, and still throwing out debuffs from Blunderbusses like nobodies' business. Aloth, since I find it hard to "program" for effective offensive casting, I simply make him a spellblade with tons of auto-buffs and ranged weapon damage (Frostseeker or summoned weapons). Either class or class-combo should be fine. Rogue probably does more damage; Fighter is probably more reliable; Pure Wizard is probably the most "I'll properly control him now and change this fight if I need it". Some feelings I have about setting your own AI, that I'll irresponsibly make into tips (take my inexperienced approach with some grains of salt): Make it level by level, it isn't overwhelming if you make it part of the level up. Adjust as you see fit, it is rewarding to identify a need and fix it. Pick your upgrades based on what you feel you can incorporate in your gameplay/AI, not every great build fits your micro availability/willingness. Heavy AI usage kinda goes hand in hand with "death-ball + atrition" group setups and long fights, at least in my experience; extra points for renewable sustain power; Incorporating "on-rest" and usable (yes, you can potion/scroll on auto) items is powerful but far more tiresome than relying on "always available" resources. Beating a hard fight on autopilot to me is as fun as microing the hell out of it; makes me feel a mastermind of careful planning. I don't think I could do any Megaboss with my general strategies, and I think it is a fair ceiling.

I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? "No!" says the quest marker, it belongs to the impatient. "No!" says the in-game GPS, it belongs to the blind. "No!" says the witcher sense, it belongs to the stupid. I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Gothic. The Gothic Remake Shows What's Wrong With Modern Games

I'm still around. In fact, this forum is the only game developer forum I still frequent.

Servus!

Okay I figured out. the effect that triggers another destroy effect can't have infinite duration, and adding the destroy effect with insta-kills effects won't work. Must add a duration/delay to both

I'm pretty sure that's a vanilla game issue. You can also keep summoned or "natural" weapons with the help of Spiritshift/Form of the Fearsome Brute, Draining Touch and Minor Blights*. So something with the implementations of "switching forms" and "switching weapons" along the way is not 100% watertight. * for example cast Minor Blights, then shift into an Ogre, then the right Ogre Fists weapon gets replaced by a minor blight - bc. they rotate elemental types and this will summon a new form of blight weapon every time, even when you are shifted and cannot cast, then when the fight ends before the Minor Blights and Fearsome Brute spell runs out you will transform back into your normal form - with an Ogre Fist in your weapon slot which you can use like any other weapon (it's auto scaling). They are actually pretty good because they always interrupt on crit. And they make a funny boink sound when striking with them. Same can be done with spiritshift weapons or the one handed Great Sword of Citzal (PL9 wizard spell). That's all without any mods.

Subnautica 2 too. Having fun so far. As @Hurlshort mentioned, there is nothing wildly different about it. Also having fun with HoMaM Olden Era. The nostalgia is of the charts on this one and so far it's not losing steam.

Finished Mixtape. Pretty good experience. Though it's less a game and more some sort of interactive story, I guess. The visuals are very nice. They kinda copied Life is Strange but made it feel like its own thing, which is great. Makes me feel nostalgic for a time that I never even experienced. It's like those 90s inspired artworks where if you have lived through the 90s, you recognize all the details, but it just wasn't like that if you get what I mean. Anyways. pretty good. Would like to have more. Best part: No super powers. Holy ****. Is that even possible? A teenage drama game without special super human abilities? Yes, yes it is. The characters are remembering things from the past, and because of that, everything is kinda dream-like and open for interpretation. IMO it's well done. Really hope there will be some more in the future.

Imo the most fun combination is Wizard/Monk and especially Bloodmage/Helwalker (or Nalpaszca or vanilla) because there's lots of synergies and the active abilities are most fun to use imo. Turning Wheel (+10 INT and burning lash) is great with an AoE weapon such as Spirit Lance since the AoE size grows a lot with wounds. Stunning Surge is awesome with Spirit Lance and also Kalakoth's Minor Blights. Blood Sacrifice is not only trading spell casts for health but also results in instant wound generation. Force of Anguish is hilarious with Spirit Lance (send enemies flying into all directions). Blade Turning with Wall of Draining is bonkers. You can just ignore melee attackers (they will kill themselves) while you calmly cast some spells. Paralyzing spells such as Ninagauth's Shadowflame work well in combination with Merciless Gaze + Swift Flurry & Heartbeat Drumming because of the stacked crit conversions. And so on and so forth. Wizard/Soulblade is good but imo it's too one-dimensional. Wizard/Fighter is also good (Wall of Draining + Unbending is bonkers and so is Clear Out + Spirit Lance) but imo it's less entertaining than Monk. Wizard/Druid can actually be a good melee combo of you like spiritshift. It's not that great early but had tremendous potential later in the game. Something like Bloodmage/Lifegiver (Cat form), combined with Wall of Draining, numerous self buffs and Zandethu's Draconic Fury does good melee dmg, casts very fast and is almost impossible to kill even if Blood Sacrifice is used a lot because the Restorations can be stacked and are so strong when shifted. For Wizard/Paladin I made a build that was very fun to play (Bloodmage/Steel Garrotes) - search for a "Bloody Parry" class build in this forum if you are interested. But it's less about melee damage and more about using a special melee weapon to combine passive healing with defense and constant spellcasting. I like Wizard/Rogue with AoE weapons (Blights or Lance or even a rod + Blast in the beginning) and Arterial Strike + spells that slows enemies movement down further (Arduous Delay, Chillfog etc.). They will run slowly but still get the raw dmg from Arterial Strike per 0.1 sec (the game doesn't count actual steps but just applies the raw dmg every 0.1 secs as long as enemies move). Assassin/Bloodmage can cast such a spell from stealth and immediately follow with an AoE Crippling Strike (stealth has a -80% recovery time bonus). If you then follow up with a Pull of Eora most enemy groups are usually done. Or you combine Gouging Strike + Arterial Strike at the start of combat for more raw ticks. That's also fun imo.

I have yet to mini-game fish in CD. I simply swim around and catch by hand. It works so why not. Every medieval/fantasy game needs the hangin' tree, right? There are 7 trillion "jigsaw puzzle" scenes in this game. Still like his hair. And the cat. Especially the cat. (they've also added birds as tameable pets now, heh).

Contrary to popular superstition, AES 128 is just fine in a post-quantum world - Ars Technica

I found a multitude of issues in my around 5 - 6 hours of playtime. While playing multiplayer, my friends buggy would consistently keep disappearing even after reloading a save. It got to a point where his buggy fully vanished from the game, he didn't even have the option to call it anymore. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I load into the game majority of my key binds that I have changed are completely reset. Seems as if arrows will clip through bugs, I haven't done any specific testing so take this point with a grain of salt but while fighting the stinkbug all of my arrows ended up passing directly through him. More of a complaint rather than a bug I suppose is the fact that there are very weird key bind decisions that were made. For example, I like to have tab binded to my 6th item for my hot bar, I changed it but then quickly came to the conclusion that tab will always bring you to your inventory even if you don't have a single bind dedicated to tab. Furthermore, I just think many things should be able to be changed, things like drinking out of a canteen being changed from right click to left click or being able to specifically change your ability to deposit planks instead of one key bind changing both deposit and drop. Found that when mapping the G key to the deposit function, you are not able to deposit a single plank at a time, it will always force you to deposit the whole stack which can be annoying if you aren't carrying a lot of planks. Again more of a complaint rather than a bug but still felt like it might be important to mention. There seems to not be any way to bind a category to your hot bar rather than a specific item, for example, I have my red ant club pinned to my 8th hot bar slot. that means that only the red ant club can be in that slot, but for my 7th slot (which I luckily didn't change when I loaded into the game for the first time) the category of food is in that slot, which means any food will automatically transfer into that slot. I don't know if this is a bug but I would find it hard to believe that this is how they wanted it to function. General lagginess, feel like if my computer is able to run games like Apex Legends at max graphics very smoothly that this game shouldn't struggle as much as it does, I feel very framey a lot of the time and that doesn't feel great.\ Game crashed by swapping between my weapons at a fast rate, I like to fidget some times by swapping between my weapons while I am exploring, tried doing it once and my game got insanely framey and proceeded to crash, this isn't a consistent thing however but thought it would be important to mention. Don't know if this one is considered a glitch but it's not how it worked in Grounded 1 so I doubt it's supposed to work like this. I have my toggle perspective binded to my scroll wheel, when I click it, I change perspectives. However, my copy blueprint is also binded to clicking scroll wheel, I remember in grounded 1 both of these binds were the same, but now when I go and try to copy a blueprint it throws me out of third person assuming because both of these binds are the same, this was not how it worked in the first title so I am inclined to believe that this isn't how it is supposed to work. Although I love the buggies those things CANNOT sit still, a lot of the time when I go and try to make them stay, they will just move anyway, I don't know if this is just a misunderstanding of what "stay put" means but just found it a little weird. Overall, this game is awesome and I am very excited to see how they update it, I know it's in beta but as of right now I have kinda found this game to be unplayable because of the despawning buggy and the weird glitched keybind stuff, I love it, but man is it testing my patience.

sweet jeebus, that might explain why those druid sporelings carried me in that Sealed Fate ambush.