Bartimaeus

"​The fact that a liberty-hating statist like Trump is so adamant to releasing it reinforces that it MUST not be released." ?

Why didn't they get a PC they *knew* was CPU-limited (think lower-end dual core with like a GTX 1080 or something), and test with that? Might as well test with several RAM speeds while you're at it, too... You had a shot to either kill or confirm this thing, and you wasted it!

It's probably because I'm watching them all within such a short amount of time (the first I saw was Nausicaa about two weeks ago?) that I had a little more muted reaction towards Laputa. It was fun and pleasant and there wasn't really anything particularly bad about it, but I didn't feel it was all too special, either.

I didn't know that about it - that might be it. The dialogue pacing feels very different from the other Ghibli movies I've seen (which I actually kind of like), but on the other hand, it feels like some connecting scenes were missing, leading to characters acting a little...odd at times. Furthermore, the final quarter of the movie was pretty Disney-esque, which I was actually surprised (and a little disappointed) by, as none of the other Ghibli movies I've seen had been. Great first half, but not quite as great second half, I guess. Yeah, that's quite a good way to sum it up for me. It's probably one of my least-favourite Miyazaki films, which is really not saying much since it still is very enjoyable and featuring a number of moments of sheer excellence, not to mention being as creative and visually striking as ever. i can't say I noticed much with regards to the dialogue pace but it's been years since I've seen it myself, and neither did I really feel the ending was too 'Disney', rather that, as you say, the thin connective tissue towards the end made it a feel a bit more jumbled and uneven. So which ones have you seen so far, Bart? Everything just falls neatly and perfectly into place and resolves in a completely ideal manner at the end, even though I wasn't totally sure how we even got to that point. It just didn't feel...earned, I guess, which made it a little dissatisfying. I've seen Nausicaa, Laputa, Only Yesterday, and Kiki's Delivery Service. Right now, I think I'd rank them 1. Howl, 2. Nausicaa, 3. Kiki's, 4. Only Yesterday, 5. Laputa. I've mentioned seeing all of them in this thread so far besides Laputa (which was...in terms of pure enjoyment, maybe was higher than Only Yesterday, but it was much less interesting, which gets it ranked a little lower).

Today, he came out and said the opposite: that he would not resign, and he would in fact publicly contradict and provide a rebuttal to the memo if it's released.

It's funny how the story has changed from, "The FBI helped elect Trump!" (with Comey having a big announcement that they were reopening the Clinton investigation days before the election) to the opposite. Well, regardless, Nunes has apparently been caught editing the memo even further without the consent of the House after the "initial" version was approved. Fortunately for him, that doesn't break any laws - just some Congressional rules (...and it goes without saying that all ethics have been long since thrown out the window, clearly).

I mean, the memo itself will probably be worthless, as it's likely to be just a bunch of talking points. The underlying classified info (whom I believe only Schiff and Gowdy have seen...and Gowdy just announced that he was resigning right after the memo was voted to be released) is what's actually of value...but we won't get that (probably for good reasons, but still). Furthermore, we won't even get the Democrats' rebuttal to the GOP talking points, as they voted down the Dems' own memo that was in response. Smells a bit like partisan hackery.

Ignoring Sonic06's perpetual state of contrarianism, the classics are definitely overrated, but in the sense that they're not really amazing masterpiece films like a lot of Star Wars fans seem to make them to be. They're solid and fairly simple action space operas that have a lot of heart with some meanderings into philosophy and morality. They also have pretty good (and natural) chemistry between the cast, and there's a lot of cool and cleverly used film techniques for the time (a lot of which still stands up today). Funnily enough, the things that make the original series good (good cast, sweet and simple plot that gives way to the cast doing their thing, cool sets and locations and film techniques, etc.), are pretty much all the things that the prequels utterly lacked in every way imaginable, which is why the prequels are braindead CGI and/or laughably choreographed* action snoozefests. For these new sequels...I think they're much more of a mixed bag, which is a massive improvement over the prequels, which is really all it had to be to be "great" by Star Wars standards, I suppose. The 'bar' they had to reach had fallen into the core of the Earth, after all. The first movie was a repeat of a New Hope almost beat for beat (even down to the locations), which was...okay, for a new trilogy that was trying to divorce itself from the prequels, but the second movie was where things were supposed to really take off. They did...sort of. I no longer really care about the characters or where they're going or what will happen with the plot from here on out, which I guess means it wasn't very good in that regard...but at least the action, writing, and locations are still better than the sterile, repetitive nonsense that was the prequels. *The amount of technical skill that went into the choreography in the prequels is no doubt impressive, but the result on screen is...unnatural, silly-looking, and very obviously choreographed to the point of absurdity. If you think Palpatine and Yoda in Episode 3 is a better battle than Vader and Obi-Wan in Episode 4, then we'll almost certainly never see eye-to-eye on what makes a good movie, because for me, it ain't about endless and pointless action sequences with characters you don't give the least amount of crap about. Action sequences, especially what're supposed to feel like important and/or dangerous action sequences, are given importance and meaning when you actually care about the characters involved - at least one of them! - and you're worried about what the outcome will be and what the consequences from that outcome will be. How many of the same crappy action sequences had we seen by the end of Episode 3 in the prequels? I'm not supposed to be watching some mindless action movie with characters who could live or die without me batting an eye - I'm supposed to be watching Star Wars.

I didn't know that about it - that might be it. The dialogue pacing feels very different from the other Ghibli movies I've seen (which I actually kind of like), but on the other hand, it feels like some connecting scenes were missing, leading to characters acting a little...odd at times. Furthermore, the final quarter of the movie was pretty Disney-esque, which I was actually surprised (and a little disappointed) by, as none of the other Ghibli movies I've seen had been. Great first half, but not quite as great second half, I guess.

Howl's Moving Castle. I really thought I wasn't gonna like it for the first five, ten minutes. Cheesy as all heck, a kind of confusing and maybe not as well-defined plot as the other Ghibli movies I've seen so far, and the animation style wasn't really all to my tastes...but it was actually still pretty great even accounting for those problems. I'd put it right up there with Nausicaa or maybe even a little above. It did feel a little more...American-ized than the other Ghibli movies I've seen, but I can't quite put my finger on why. That's not necessarily a negative, but it's not necessarily a positive, either.

That seems pretty lame, but at least it sounds like a semi-legitimate squirming out of doing it. I am a little more concerned about the apparent groundwork that the GOP is laying as a reason to fire Rosenstein and Mueller. I don't see anything preventing them from getting away with it, either. Hmm. A few Republican senators might support protecting him and possibly re-appointing him, but unless they actually force a re-organization in the Senate, it'll never come to a vote.

Valve seems unlikely, given Gabe Newell owns 100% of the company and seems to hate(?) Microsoft, or at least dislike them. Also, Microsoft purchasing Valve would probably be pretty terrible for mainstream gaming, given Microsoft's abysmal attempts at trying to control the market so far.

The Trump administration announced today that it would not enforce the sanctions voted on months ago nearly unanimously by Congress (98-2 in the Senate, 419-3 in the House...and signed in by the President). I guess that means we're in a constitutional crisis? I mean, we have checks and balances for dealing with this (impeachment via the legislative branch), but they almost certainly won't be taken, especially seeing as the GOP continues to put all its eggs in one basket in Trump, so...that'll be an interesting precedent.

That does sound more like the original concept music by Brian Williams than Mark Morgan's work - is that the case? There used to be downloads of his work for the game on the Interplay website circa the late 90s and early 2000s (that I have copies of), but this trailer's music was not included. Too bad, too, since I came in thinking that I couldn't really remember any trailers, and instantly remembered the entirety of that trailer when I saw you posted it, even though it's been forever since I saw it. This one from Icewind Dale isn't quite as memorable.

Yeah, I've never used a limited use, limited quantity item like potions or wands in BG in pretty much any game. It's just the principle of the matter, .

e: resized because holy crap that was big

Furi (thanks, Shady!). Decently fun gameplay, laughably bad character design and writing and...pretty much everything that isn't the combat itself. Cheat Engine's speedhack to the rescue for all those parts!

maybe people realized that john is boring and annie is just kind of not very good

​what the eff

​ ​Ah, chokepoints, that age-old AI exploit. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. If you had them try to calculate whether it was a wise idea to go in, you'd then have to figure out what to do in the event that it isn't. Do you have them stay back? The player would just pepper them with ranged attacks. Do you have them run away to a different area? That might work in a few areas, but not in a lot of others. Do have them take out ranged weapons themselves? Similarly to the last one, it'll make sense for some enemies to have ranged weapons, but it won't for a lot of others (especially monsters). About all I can think of that would reliably work is some sort of "shove" ability, but that would probably feel very cheap and undermine the tactics of character placement to begin with. You don't want to destroy the very idea of chokepoints afterall, as it's actually a very realistic and useful tactic in real life combat situations. It's too bad that most games' combat systems just aren't really equipped to deal with them in a way that seems organic.

​On the other hand, if you stay on Windows 7, you help contribute to developers not being able to afford to switch to W10/DX12 only, as it's still much too big of a demographic to ignore. :D

​You know your cat is diabetic when he refuses to eat meat - chicken, tuna, salmon, doesn't matter - and will only eat that dried pure carb crap... What a stupid cat I have.

​ ​witchwood thadbbey

​​ ​Hey, I'm an equal opportunity complainer: I'm pretty contemptuous of Bethesda games as well.

speaking of intelligent communication, I fixed these for you,