LadyCrimson

^ 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. >.>

Past two weeks or so while in my pc room, off and on all day and early morn like 2am: "What is that weird/freaky noise? Did the neighbors get sick geese? Or a turkey? Mutated cats? What what?" *YouTube* ... Oh, it's those white herons/egrets nesting in the street trees ... it's weird because I don't remember hearing their gobbles and calls last summer and they were in the same tree. I also didn't know they made that kind of noise. I always see them from far away, wading in the bay outlets etc.

Netflix is still worth it to me because one, hubby uses it a lot, and two, it has a lot of non-US programming, eg a nice mix in one spot. Also ... its overall streaming quality (eg, how close I can sit before it starts to look terrible), player UI, and audio, at least for me, are the best. Especially the audio, vs. others. I watched Stowaway on Netflix. It's basically a human drama on a ship bound for a Mars mission where success of mission is then threatened, that type of thing. It's not Aliens, it's not Gravity. Restrained, quiet, perhaps just a tad too long. Maybe could have used a tiny bit more chr. depth or situation tension here and there. But Anna Kendrick (and the other few actors) did a fine job. I don't think I felt quite as emotionally engaged as the film wanted me to be but it was still pretty decent. I'd give it, say, a solid B.

Heathen! ...I think I became stuck, in D3, on GR69 (with a summon Necro). I couldn't clear 70 quite fast enough on whatever difficulty I was on (or it required, per usual I forget) with the way I was set up. Necro was the only class I really liked playing in the end. Wizard and Monk were ok but ... yeah, I like summons. I don't like D3 enough to play the story mode/start over or make another Seasonal chr, so after checking out the follower gear, and running around a little bit, I put it away again. Diablo2-R looks all right/they seem to be doing a good job with it, but I'd also like an HD polish of Diabloi1, personally. they don't have to "improve" gameplay at all, just do that graphic overlay improvement.

Ah, ok. So not *just* absorb/prevent damage but also transfers at least some of that energy back into his own attacks, giving him more melee powah too. Makes sense. I'd still have aimed for his head tho.

When I picked it up again on console (where I hadn't played it at all for 4-5 years maybe) I found myself increasing the difficulty constantly, to whatever the game let me do at each stage, when initially going thru story mode. Back at original release it wasn't like that, and was a tad tougher from the get go. They really did lower even the base difficulty drastically, over time, I think in part to allow for their crazy amount of more incremental difficulties (vs. huge jumps) added later. Anyway, most people use whatever difficulty they can manage, since you can change it at any time. Edit: well, in stages periodically at first, I can't recall exactly... @Lexx Personally I think items in most "action-rpg's" of any genre (this includes stuff like Borderlands) have all adopted the same mindset re: bonuses/item stats as well as skills and ofc, "loot explosions", and I largely find it not as long-term satisfying, because even "uniques" often don't feel very special. Even D2 started to go that route by the end of all their expansions/updates. It's all designed for single-chr. endgame concerns, because people want to keep progressing/respeccing forever and ever with the same character or three, so you have to draw it out somehow to keep players playing/coming back and stay ... relevant? ... while you're spending 5+ years developing your next game. Diablo3 at least still has some fun Legendaries/Uniques (and Sets) with fun effects - not necessarily always about uber chr. dps - like the Puzzle Ring or the one that generates a little exploding imp follower periodically. I like stuff like that. Plus you can put the latter on a Follower because it's funny. Plus of course the Seasons rewards if one does like starting from scratch again.

Going to agree. And I also laughed at that one spot/thing, haha. Some of the fights were ok, but it has the issue of many of these films with mostly terrible acting - but where it's not actually terrible/cheesy enough to be hilarious. The fight at the main guy's house and the last sub zero fight were fairly fun to watch. I'm a little unclear what the main dude's power was tho - really good armor/ability to take hits and form little swords under his forearms. Was that it? The red glows in the armor just indicate the suit absorbing the damage? But then everyone should've just gone for his head, right?