LadyCrimson

Still bouncing back and forth between Planet Explorers alpha and Path of Exile public beta for an hour or two here or there when I can stay awake, haha. I still, for some reason, find PoE's combat mechanics kind of awkward. I'm starting to think it's just me and my klutzy fingers.

Wow cannot stay awake. Fell asleep at 9 last night, woke up at 5am, now I'm already snoring in my chair. Must be hormones. Or not enough diet Mt. Dew. Either way, think I'll go back to bed - got a few hours+ before the Red Sox game.

To be fair, I doubt they were expecting very many players to be playing at 4000-5000 resolution. Yeah, yeah...if you can/like to play at such resolutions, it feels lazy for companies not to design for it, but...oh well. I still have to play Dungeon Keeper at 640x480 or whatever, so boohoo. ...and that game looks nice in huge-size HD, regardless.

Watching a lot of Siskel & Ebert reviews from "At the Movies" via YouTube, which is a great memory trip. From the blurry, scratchy vids, I deduce they were from people's home VHS collections. Why is this show not for sale on DVD yet? At least, I haven't been able to find it. I'd buy them all, at least until Siskel's last episode.

Yeah, that's the one. I guess they're still around, then, in some areas, just not most of the ones I grew up with, except for the one in Menlo Park. I didn't realize that one was still there, I might have to check it out sometime. Oddly, that one isn't the one I used to frequent a lot, even tho I grew up in MP, heh. They could vary between locations, like you mentioned with DQ. Not all of them would have the fried artichokes, for example. Dang....now I want a burger and soft cone. And the trans fat issue...I think that is part of the flavor change. Don't know if it's the fat itself or because the base product used to make no trans fat oil are different, imparting a different taste to the oil. I'd guess more the latter.

Planet Explorer's 5th update details their plans for how a player can build settlements. It's fairly interesting, imo. After more time spent with their current alpha, I think it's a mistake to dismiss or call this game a "Minecraft with better graphics." The thing is, the focus really isn't on the digging. Interacting with/altering the environment (flattening terrain to build farms or settlements, gathering resources) is a part of it, sure, but you don't have to actually do tons of "digging" if you don't want to, outside of minimum resources to build whatever you need/want. Or, you can spend all your time digging to the exclusion of all else. Freedom. I don't know....it's really hard to explain the appeal of this game, even in it's rough stage. And of course it won't appeal to everyone. Plus it's still rough, especially the story aspect and NPC's (you can hire companions, btw). Still, I absolutely love it. If it wasn't US tax time I'd bump up my pledge to almost as high as I did for P.E. P.S. even if one doesn't want to pledge, maybe one could go to Steam and Greenlight it? :D P.P.S they're hoping to get a Mac version of the current alpha out before the KS is over.

*watches video/s* This game seems more and more awesome all the time. Love the sheepie too, nice work LordCrash/all.

Every once in a while (a very great while) I get a hankering for a little KFC chicken. The last few times I went, it became steadily worse. There was actually a time (back in the late 70's) when KFC's fried chicken wasn't terrible. Not saying it was great or like homemade, but it wasn't bad. It's truly bad now. Whatever they use to fry it in these days tastes terrible...stale almost. And the pieces are so small compared to what they used to be. What are they using, some kind of mini-chicken? Same thing with the A&W fast food joints. They used be relatively good and my family would go there on Sundays to get burgers and jugs of root beer. Then they went downhill and disappeared from my area altogether. And I miss Foster's ... they had some good burgers...and fried artichoke hearts. Yum. All gone now....Dairy Queen is not the same, bleh.

WHAT? I knew he's been staying in the hospital for a while, something about a fracture (others have been writing the reviews), but I didn't realize it was that serious. *looks at his journal site* ... ah hadn't read that entry. Fracture turned out to be cancer. Man that sucks. And he sounded so hopeful/planning for the future, still, in that entry. May he and Siskel be thumb wrestling together, somewhere.

Once, in Borderlands 2, one of those loot-chest-on-the-back goons appeared inside a tiny building as I entered. I backed up and ended up killing him so his corpse fell in front of the door. The problem was, the quest required me to grab something from inside that building and now I had a corpse blocking the small doorway. I couldn't go around. I couldn't jump over. I couldn't crouch and go under. I had to either leave the area (marching all the way back to the point on the map where I could do so), or exit the game/restart, or stand around picking my nose waiting for the corpse to disappear on its own (maybe 15 minutes). Now, BL2 doesn't have "realistic" corpse physics or anything, but regardless, that was really really annoying and I do not want. If you are to have "realistic physics" with corpses, the game must not create such scenarios/must account for all possible playstyles/actions/terrain to prevent such things from occurring. Is it silly to be able to walk through corpses? Yes. Is it weird if corpses disappear after 60 seconds or the instant you loot them or something? Yes. Is it nice to have more realism re: corpses or anything else where possible? Yes. Is it fun if those mechanics interfere with you being able to do a quest or making you wait? No. In short, I agree with Lephy's.

I think another reason is that their KS isn't so much to propose/create the game, but to expand/enlarge the game they're already making. The game is already largely in process/made, right? The KS is to raise funds to improve and expand it. I've tended to observe that such KS don't tend to raise the "millions" because folks are less willing to give millions to expand something that could/will be released regardless. Not saying it doesn't/couldn't happen, just it makes it less likely, imo. So I'll be quite happy if they just reach a couple hundred thousand above their official goal.

Well, at least with Steam, if you uninstall something like that, Steam will just install it again for you. Anyway, I did install the SP1/newer versions, and they did install as separate items vs. the old, so it does seem that they don't supersede each other. Which is good to know. ... didn't help my game issue, however. Ah well. I'll just play in a lower resolution/windowed till they optimize the game better.

I haven't played enough since a lot of major changes to really know much about it. Classes seem mostly about the passive attribute tree and what you decide to focus on there, which is huge and oft. confusing. Currently each class starts at a different point in the "tree," making reaching/increasing certain things easier or harder. eg, making a melee mage is still possible, but more difficult than it used to be. (there's also the gem-skill system, which is flexible) So each class does have a starting focus (Witch=mage etc), but it doesn't mean you can't veer away from it if you really want. Item requirements are based on the primary attributes ... so if you want to be able to wield a giant 2H mace, you're probably going to need to focus a lot on STR, so a Witch wouldn't be a good one for that goal. That sort of thing. I think the Ranger is the general bow, but the Duelist could do that as well since he can easily get a lot of DEX. Witch and Duelist were my two faces early on.

Hm. Interesting point. Maybe the issue with the game is that I don't have a 64 one. They aren't clear whether that's necessary, altho they do say the O/S should be 64 to run the alpha, at the moment. edit: the alpha explanation seems to be this: "OpenCL runs on the GPU which makes it not the same as other games. OpenCL is an enhanced version of C extended with attributes to permit parallel processing, which is something CPU are very bad at but GPU are very good at. The task at hand does not have to be gfx, it just needs to be vectorized kernel." So heavy GPU load expected, just not quite this much.

Sad for the job losses, but otherwise doesn't really affect me much. And yeah...not very surprising.

Oh, no....none of the things you can buy with the "points" have anything to do with gameplay itself. They're completely optional, and most of the things so far (imo) are pretty stupid, really. I'd have no desire to have them. Non-combat pets, character dance animation moves, alternate graphic spell effects (your fireball would look more snazzy or whatever), that sort of thing. What I would call vanity/show-off options. The town stash space is about the only thing I'd say one might want to enjoy the game, and $30 (or maybe it was $35) would get you those 16 pages I ended up with. Of course, if one really likes "vanity" options in games, that might be an issue...but not needed to play/enjoy the game itself. You're not missing anything. That's been their intention/plan all along...it's not about buying better gear or anything like that.

That's what I'm afraid of. Reason I ask is because the Planet Explorer's alpha is running my GPU at 99 load the entire time. The game seems to run ok that way (GPU gets warm but not super abnormally so) but it doesn't seem like it should be doing that...and the game's not doing it for everyone, seems like. Someone else said they updated/installed the above and it helped. It's weird because even if turn AA/other settings off/low, the GPU load remains the same. I'm not sure if installing those SP1 C++ files would actually overwrite the ones already there or just add to the list, either.

Had to take a break from digging underground fortresses...so I figured I'd update my Path of Exile install (that took awhile...) and play a little bit. Still not something I feel like playing a lot at the moment, but it is one of those games I might go back to briefly now and then. But I also I got a lot of hours of gameplay during the closed beta, so I finally gave them some money. This gave me points/tokens or whatever to buy their micro-transaction stuff. I looked through what they had at the moment, and seems like you'd have to be a pretty huge die-hard PoE fan to want to spend a lot of real money for enough "points" to buy most of the pets, spell effects, etc. There's one decorative "pet" that would be maybe $120 to have the points just to get that single thing. Doesn't seem like a very "micro" transaction. No thanks. That said, the one thing I do like is the stash-tab increases. So used my tokens for that, and so now, for once in a game of this type, if I ever play it for a long time again, I just might have enough stash space!

I still prefer such things to be a one-shot thing I can sit down and watch one evening. I guess I'm just don't crave that much info all the time. Edit: nothing wrong doing it the other way, btw. I just wouldn't watch them all until they were put into one giant DVD where I could pick and choose which ones I'm interested in.

So I know some games need these things, and Steam tends to like to install them when needed. I'm curious if it's something I should try to keep updated, if there's a benefit to it, ala keeping up with video drivers. Like, I have Win7-64/SP1 and I think there's a C++ Redistr. for that, but under "installed programs" none of the ones listed seem to be that. Do y'all bother with it, or only install them if a game/program demands them? I seem to have these: ...and the MS download site has these: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679 I don't even know if I need the 64 C++ Redistrib....

Watched the Iron Man 3 (really long) trailer. I have two things to say: 1 - I love Ben Kingsley, but I'm not sure about this one. 2 - the dramatic image of what seems like over half a dozen iron-men suited people is pretty awesome.

I lost my Amazon virginity this last weekend, ordering some new headphones. The pads finally wore out on my old ones. Just some Sony MDR7506's for the PC which isn't something our local walk-ins generally carry. I've listened to all the current popular brands in the $150 or under range and Sony's still the only one where the treble doesn't nails-on-chalkboard my eardrums to death, but still sounds fairly clean w/ok bass.... Anywho, it was directly from Amazon's warehouses (not one of the resellers) and I paid a bit extra to get the 3 day delivery or something. Arrived today a bit early, so that was nice. Still hate ordering online and won't unless I have to, but....I guess that Amazon is all right...

Adam's rockin' that black leather(?) jacket. I like that the doc's going to be more of a complete film, rather than in multiple installments. I'm still used to movie docs being that way and can't get used to all the "watch our daily/weekly 5 min long making of/preview clips now!" stuff. Guess I don't like having to remember to keep track of such things...I like having it all in one shot - don't have to see it as it happens.

Yeah, I don't have too much on the main C drive, even with all the games (maybe 155GB) but the storage drives are another matter. Videos (mostly gaming in my case) are the worst. Can't believe how much space we "need" these days.

Finally moved my main rig back into my office. Had to dust out the allergens first...at a glance it didn't look very dusty but using the squeeze bulb, volcano plumes of dust out of the top fans area and GPU fan outlets. 4 months and it was that bad - collects a lot slower in the den, maybe because I don't open windows in here often, plus less dust-creators. Indoors, paper products are the worst dust/fiber creators, btw...as bad as or worse than rugs/blankets. Anyway...it's nice to be back in my personal fortress of solitary tech masturbation. Gets irritating trying to be on the PC while hubs has the TV blaring in my ears or is doing whatever else. If hubs still wants to play BL2 he'll have to find us some good headset gear or just put up with the crappy sounding intercom. Sorry, sweetie. Maybe next winter I'll move into the living room again. Maybe.