LadyCrimson

It's where it and Frodo are playing peek-a-boo around a pillar, not long before Aragon tries to help then Frodo is stabbed. I'm pretty sure (so my memory says) that it was in the original theater cut, although the theater was so long ago I could be mistaken (edit: or maybe it was in theater but they changed it a bit still on dvd?). It's in my version of extended, which I think was the first released version of such (if there are other special extended versions that came after I do not know of/have any of those). I took the screencap from a YouTube video tho, since I was lazy. Edit: this youtube video: (checked my extended dvd, it matches)

Know what I miss about this thing? ...the manual carriage return. When you were typing frantically at high speed for hours and slapping that lever like a madperson...and that sound of it moving, with the little ding (that told you to return). It was so much more satisfying then pressing Enter. And of course, the clacky sound of the keys striking. ...I don't miss changing the ink ribbons, or one day trying "erasable" typewriter paper and finding out it smudged like mad and going back to liquid paper fluid or a whole new sheet/re-typing.

Skin texture, lighting/reflection issues, wrong or absent shadows, facial animation seems stiff (not anywhere like the worst or anything but). Just didn't look "real" to me at all. When I was in the theater I was just ... "ugh." Also, not specific to that movie, I'm just sick of the generic cgi monster roar-face, which includes brief moments in The Mummy which came before LotR. Not every monster has to roar like a lion or grizzly, darnit. Shadows and CGI use in movies were often a problem back then. Probably still is, but often a little less noticeable now. Like in Return of the King, ever notice the wide shots of the Rohan army near the end have massive shadows projecting directly in front of the horsemen all lined up on the hill, but they disappear whenever they show closer shots of the human actors/the king making his speech/hitting all the spears with his own sword etc? Not that it doesn't still make it an exciting/awesome movie moment when you're caught up into the film, mind. I love that whole ride of the rohan sequence. But I notice stuff like that all the time.

I thought they looked bad even at release, at least that one scene in that ... courtyard? Y'know, the one where Keanu does the thing with the pole. The LotR cave troll still bugs me to this day (especially the roar animation), and anything that came after that was very similar. It's a lot better now but still, every time Godzilla face-expressed (human expressions on Godzilla....) in that recent film I lol'd. Sorry. In my defense, it was a good-natured/fun sort of lol.

That whole scene is so iconic, imo. I don't have it on 4k disc but I did get it and T2 on regular bluray. Although I have to say, when I see it now, every time the lady in the blue tiger stripe appears I always think "DANCING SO 80'S". I swear everyone in my highschool danced like that at parties. EVERYONE.

--sometimes I feel like many people forget Cameron directed True Lies. --I should note when I first saw T1 (I missed it in theaters, had to see it on VHS on a 19" CRT TV) I was obsessed with it. Watched it over and over, paused it, slo-mo'd it, etc. It being 3rd on my Cameron list is mostly due to time passing/the other films coming out.

^ People just like making fun of it at this point. It really wasn't that bad - just nothing special. The visuals (including motion capture) and/or 3D for the time are what sold it - such wasn't commonplace at the time. But these days grand (and CGI and motion capture) visuals are a dime a dozen. For me it goes: Aliens > T2 > T1 > Abyss (especially extended) > True Lies I did kind of like Titanic. Not in a superfan way but I enjoyed it for what it was. It felt grand (occasionally cheesy...), I liked the attention to detail, and it had it's moments, although Jack running around the ship yelling "Rose!" over and over and over wasn't one of them.

Feeding time: 3:38. Cat "ice cream" on a stick: 6:35

Made/ate lunch. Played mobile slots. Scratched my arse. Pestered hubby in the backyard. Browsed the 'net. Made/ate dinner. Pestered hubby in the garage (outside was too windy apparently). Listened to music. Scratched my arse. Now it's either time to watch a little TV, play more slots, or play Dungeon Keeper. I'll toss a coin. ...pretty much like every other day, in other words. ...I wish we had a cat cafe like they have in places like Japan, near here. I think there's one in San Fran, but I'm not driving up there.

There's two versions of this song played at points in the series. This is the male singer version, which is played at the climax/end of the series and which I prefer. If you're curious, female version is here. Anyway, I find it beautiful/haunting/melodic. Hasn't been long but I think it's already time to rewatch it. ..they're sung in English but if you have a hard time understanding all the words/care about such, the brief lyrics:

You know what this means, don't you ... your workbench is not big tall enough. Sounds like a nice upgrade tho. Enjoy! Also...I can't live without my Soundblaster. Onboard sound ... pffft.

I thought Avatar was passable brain-at-door fantasy entertainment, just nothing special/memorable or worthy of extreme adulation. I think over time many realize the main draw at the time was likely the "new" type of 3D. People were curious about that (including me - the 3D is the only reason I went to see it in as theater) how well it worked etc. I always thought the joke that it was like Dances with Ferngully (or Pocahontas or whatever) were pretty apt, tho. I'm sure the first weekend for the sequel will make big bucks if only because people will be curious, but one problem with taking so long to finish sequels is ... most people lose their anticipation. It could be the sequels will be much improved/better than the original but it could also be that Cameron's ego will finally over take him and after the initial curiosity box office it'll be downhill from there (edit - and if the 2nd film isn't considered masterful, the 3rd when it releases would do worse etc).

*watches The Critical Drinker's video on It:Chapter 2* - Wait...how did I not realize that the actor playing Mike Hanlon was the "I'm on a horse" Old Spice ad guy? He looks so different without the short/trim beard/stache. Now I have to rewatch that movie a bit. Also: The Way of the Househusband (anime based on manga, unread by me, Netlifx) - Kenjiro Tsuda is the lead VA? I could listen to his voice all day. It's more of a cheap motion comic (still frame slides, altho their lips do move, sometimes) vs. full animation, which is weird and might be very off-putting. But if you get past that, I found it silly/OTP and entertaining. Plus it's very short, and there's a cat.

I really liked Mr. Statham in the first Transporter which is where I first saw him. He did fine in Cellular (a movie I enjoyed more than most, probably...). I barely remember Transporter2 although I did see it. I guess he was in Expendables. I think I saw and at least moderately liked Homefront but I don't remember clearly (not necessarily the movie's fault, my memory just gets worse every year). ...I'm not sure I've seen any of his other movies. None interested me after Transporter2 was "eh" and he seemed to become a meme more than anything else, like Norris or older/action-y Bruce Wilis. That said, this one looks a little more in my mindless action-y wheelhouse and I like Holt McCallany a fair bit, so I might check it out.

^ Sorry, by more details I meant I don't care if chrs faces are featureless blobs or whether I can tell if there are wrinkles in their armor. I guess I mean better upscaling, aliasing, smoothing, or whatever one calls such. I know there are limits (especially re: larger and larger screen sizes etc) but I still think it could be a little better and thus one wouldn't have to use larger "resolution" to start with or at most the 800x600. Like the mod does do a little something, you can see a difference in smoothing (or something) at the same original size (640x480) vs. the GoG version. A little more would be nice. I tried all 3 scaling quality settings, anisotropic seems the most effective. I also tried nvidia's sharpening setting out of curiosity but I'm not sure it affects this game at all, couldn't tell any difference, good or bad, heh. To me that's part of the ... challenge? surprise? ... of the game. I like that I can be attacked by something I don't see first and I have to move closer to aim/attack it.

Thinking about it, it's mostly that the FoV becomes so ginormous. I guess 800x600 is fine, but anything higher is silly. The HD/widescreen for the above mentioned games did increase the FoV a little as well, to the sides ofc, but nowhere near as extreme and things didn't become extra tiny for a single bump up in resolution or widescreen aspect. Although I'm sure if at 4k it might still do so. Those games also had higher resolution to begin with, ofc, too. Maybe I'll try playing D1 with the 1920x1080 anyway. Maybe it'll be amusing.

I don't want more detail, I want it to not look fuzzy like an overblown sized photograph when at higher resolutions or screen size but not become super tiny on the screen either. Edit: like the Stronghold HD or Casear HD mod versions do.

@Bartimaeus I do not understand which setting to use/change so it looks better on a "4k" screen but doesn't end up like this: ...that is cool /fun and all, but I cannot actually play like that. My chr/everything is like 1.5 cm tall onscreen. If I define height/width 1920x1080 (fullscreen and upscaling enabled) it's still a lot wider FoV than original game (edit - upscaling at 0 changes nothing FoV wise) If I make it 1280x720 it's more tolerable and might work but I'll likely still feel like I have a massive advantage in the dungeon...and if I leave it at the original 640x480 then it doesn't really look much better then non-modded except it's true widescreen/slightly wider side view vs. weirdly stretched like if you only forced original game to have no black bars. I'm going to guess this mod/method works/"feels" better on lower resolution monitors/tv's.... (edit: tried on the 1440 monitor, FoV is still the same. So maybe it's a Windows/Display setting issue? Dunno). editeditedit: 800x600 on a 55" tv doesn't improve clarity/sharpness much either, although fov ofc becomes more tolerable/sensible. Yes I know it's still going to be pixels/original graphics, I just mean blur/sharpness etc. Better for 27" and under monitors I suppose. I do like having town fast walk. The site mentions a negative shrine disable setting which isn't actually in the .ini file. So I copied/pasted it in. Does it still work or was it removed? I never clicked on the negative or unlabeled shrines anyway, wouldn't mind if they were non-clickable at all.

A forum post on GoG claims you can at least start a SP game on a higher difficulty: I don't know how well it works tho, I never knew of/tried it. Interesting. -All you have to do is to start a multiplayer game on "Nightmare" or "Hell" difficulty. Then simply quit back to the main menu and start a singleplayer game. The singleplayer game will be the same difficulty as the multiplayer one, including the value of experience per monster, gold drops, etc. Anyway, the MP was mostly my jam because it was harder, even Normal. Enemies had more HP by default than in SP, IIRC. I'd guess GoG's "HD" just = 1080 at most. Dangit now I want to fire it up and check out a few things.

Yes, and that's all very sensible/rational as well and I wouldn't disagree with any of such thoughts. And a little of that type of stuff crosses my mind, which is why I haven't canceled the appointment even tho I want to. ---while I could easily live for six months at a time (I do have to do blood tests occasionally...) never leaving the house or being directly physically exposed to another human being outside of hubby (as long as Amazon and Amazon Fresh or similar, and pizza delivery exists/works, anyway), hubby couldn't and wouldn't. Not just occasional work - he likes to go to Home Depot/other such places, the liquor store, etc. He could bring it home. ---I'm not completely "elderly" yet ... but I'm not exactly 20 and in the prime of my life/best physical shape ever, either ---I have Type2 diabetes etc. ...I'm still a chicken, tho, and a cynical one to boot. ...and this type of thing doesn't help - that it's not total immunity. I figure the odds of me (personally) getting it it in the first place, while not absolute zero either, are probably about as low as the vaccine would help most "normal" people to reach.

I use the GoG version on Win10. Which reminds me, it already has some HD support, but I forget how much, outside of it not being of the show-entire-town variety. I do have two or three original disc copies of the game (including a Hellfire disc...) but I think that website said the gog file would work too. I'm not sure what you mean. If you meant the battle.net like gameplay (with no quests like Poisoned Water etc) - you've always been able to do that, using the IPX multiplayer option to create a character instead of picking battle.net. It's what I used al the time, so I had to pick up any town ground-tosssed loot and exit only with what I could carry, because it would disappear/not be saved like in SP games. I liked it because it was harder in a way (especially S. King), plus I could start Normal and once I got to a certain clvl I could change difficulty immediately (or use whichever I wanted) and start at dungeon lvl 1 again to gain XP faster. eg, grind. lol. Edit: maybe you mean doing the same but with SP quests and items vs. bnet-like gameplay The SP campaign with the quests - I did play it a lot initially and yeah, it's a nice fun quick ride. I remember crossing my fingers that I'd get the quest sets I wanted. There were a couple I preferred getting. I always felt so bad for Lachdanan.

Dear Diary: My vaccine appointment date draws very near. I haven't cancelled it, but I still want to. Because while one could rationalize it all one wants, I'm basically just a chicken and I'd like to wait another year or three for more possible long-term reports, and/or newer versions of vaccine. Not like I'm traveling overseas/other countries anytime soon. I know one person who hardly had any vaccine reaction at all. Another who just had a pretty sore arm. Others who had the "run over by a truck"/stayed in bed like some of you. Which led me to very idly wonder if people with a high reaction might also have a higher chance of being a "worse case" if they did get actual Covid. Probably not. Just my bored brain pestering me with illogical nonsense.

I might download it so I can try it next time I play D1. I assume out of all those options, the file I'd want to d/l is the "devilutionx-windows-x86_64.zip" <---little old lady brain doesn't like github

I seem to recall having a mod at one point that allowed me to play D1 at much bigger resolution - although it was a little buggy. I could see practically the entire town (including Wirt) at once. I can't recall if it was an actual "mod" or that one tool that I also used to play Stardew Valley at similar crazy resolutions. Anyway...I know there are still some HD D1 mods around but many change/add stuff to the game and all I'd want is graphic/HD, not gameplay changes. I didn't even like Hellfire very much. >.>