IndiraLightfoot

Alright, photos straight out of this weather-dubious morning. I had taken a long morning walk and saw this when I was near a road: Speaking of my greenhouse, here are some tomatoes that aren't yet ready (they've been slow coming): The grapes, however, I can tell you are ready and they are sweet and delicious: Purple cone flowers are lovely. Here you see why they are called cone flowers: And here, a bumble bee has taken shelter over the rainy night. They actually sleep in the cone flowers: My orange tabby and I out picking squash. They are about as big as Woldan's, I reckon. My cat is a neat scale reference: And, finally, here's a weird leaf-like moth sitting on our towels in our bathroom:

This reminds me of this good old tune:

Woldan: This year, in my greenhouse, you'll find tomatoes and even chili from around the world and three year old grape vines. I also had cucumber in a corner, but it shrivelled up due to disease in the plant I bought. The rest I've grown from scratch, seeds, that is. Most of the spices and herbs we grow here ourselves, the same goes for fruits and vegetables, like lettuce, Jerusalem artechoke and squash. We also have a strawberry field and apple orchard, tonnes of cherries, pears and raspberries as well. However, my main interest is perennial plants of all sorts.

What's this weird obsession with facial skin, fat, ligaments and tissue? Under the skin, we all look more or less the same. Here's an ossuary sample: Beauty is perhaps deeper than skin-deep? Alright, disclaimer: I'm not into skeletal parts and other necro tendencies, but I do like the undead in various forms in fantasy settings.

This piece of news is pretty weird, but in a brave and wonderful way, somehow: "Czech "Pastafarian" wins right to wear kitchen utensil as official religious head gear. A man who claims his religion requires him to wear a sieve on his head has been granted permission to use a photo of himself wearing it – on his official ID card. Lukas Novy, a follower of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, says the plastic kitchenware is a crucial part of his “Pastafarian” faith, and he must wear it at all times to respect his deity." http://praguemonitor.com/2013/08/05/czech-pastafarian-wins-right-wear-kitchen-utensil-official-religious-head-gear

Heh. nice skill there. Grey hairs HIPS 57 = Hide In Plain Sight (as long as the light is purple). For me, it's not much use hiding it anymore. And we have two more cats - two tubbies. You can imagine how they run around playing in the glades and up and down the trees:

Just plugging away at work, but LadyCrimson, your story about your father and Willie Mays is quite moving and endearing. Thanks for sharing! I miss my father too, and that while he's still living and breathing. Unfortunately, his mind and body are more or less gone, so he's a shell of his former self. Oh, and happy birthday, Malcador!

I'm watching the first episodes of Breaking Bad again, and I must say that this series is one of the best I've ever seen. Bryan Cranston is pure genius. I'm eagerly awaiting the last eight episodes here in Europe, and no; I don't live in the UK or on Ireland, since then I'd been glued to the TV-set.

I just found this thread, and I love getting these little glimpses into the lives of fellow forumites! But you sorely need slightly more mature people in this thread. Brace yourselves for a middle-aged salt-and-pepper parent: One big interest of mine is gardening. Thus, unsurprisingly, I live in the country and I have a big property to give plenty of backyard love. Here are some photos from it. A gravel and limestone feature, and that's not a sphinx, it's one of our cats, born in our living room, by the sofa: Same orange tabby, but this time in an armchair: Roses a few weeks ago! You gotta love them roses. One corner of my greenhouse, early spring: Lilac tulips in May: One morning I took this photo through one of my kitchen windows. Spring does this to innocent animals, including hedgehogs: Living near the Baltic has its perks. The beach walks are pretty stunning where I live, no? All those insect shots are very impressive. Here's one shabby one. I had to remove a toxic spider of quite some size from my greenhouse. I poked it into a flower pot and dropped it off in a glade:

Durlag's Tower was pretty fantastic, but Watcher's Keep, not so much. First of all, I hope Obsidian skip the dungeon format that they use for the Kickstarter dungeon level advancement graphics. I don't want some towerlike structure boring its way down to one megaboss, and I especially not with a lootfest along the way. Nor do I want some dug-out pointed mountain, Grimrock-style. Instead, I'd like to see much more of caverns and underworlds with an ecology that makes sense (at least for a fantasy setting), and the same goes for communities for creatures down there. The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth did that pretty well. They need culture, history and a reasonable sociology, instead of being cannon fodder for my party (like in an arcade game or in the latest Diablo). Also, there should be many wrong turns to be taken, and plenty of mazes and dead-ends. Think of the dungeons in FF-books! Those books also had great stories for those few intelligent, but often mad, individuals that had made those dank places their home or seat of power or horrific lab... You get the picture. So, several worthy opponents would be the best. Not just waves upon waves of critters and then a dragon. And I'd love to see some sense of hopeless endeavour to it all, a bit like Dante's Inferno; "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." I don't want a single loophole getting back, well perhaps one, a well-hidden one, but no more than that. And backtracking is more than fine, it's the norm, as you will be lost. Repopulation should happen at times, and the inhabitants of caverns and dungeons will be different. Going down the dungeon should be a huge risk for the party, and getting back should turn into a dim hope, and efforts of doing so should be futile. Rather, the party will have to adapt to an underworld life and try to survive in their new abode by any means. Obviously, there should be places where the party gets a chance to recuperate and stock up a bit, but going back to the surface should be feeling like a distant dream after a while. Several party members should refer to and regret the decision to enter the mega dungeon, some maybe even whine and nag about it incessantly. At odds with this, there will be one or two companions that like or even love this new netherworld, where they really get to shine - a subterranean rogue character, for instance, with a special interest in ancient cultures and precious minerals. Oh, did I mention that undead are likely to abound in such forlorn milieus?

Let's just say that all those small profits add up. I've made something like $25 on these eager anonymous card collectors, and tomorrow, I'll get my beloved Brigmore Witches for free. Thank you, Steam benefactors! You've been good to me.

I was happy to pass level 10, though. You get a showcase UI on your profile screen that I find slightly handy, but yes, if the badges and the cards were more rewarding, it would be another game. Also, a weird thing - when you craft a badge, all those cards disappear. I mean, why cant they be some clickable option to see them all and zoom in on them, as if they were indeed cards. Weird.

Ahem, many of us proponents for a sleek and functionalist UI-design have been around for a long time. I've played computer RPGs since they started in the early 80s, and I played PnP in the 70s, for instance. We want that kind of UI for the reasons we have described (read them before making false assumptions). Perhaps - just a possibility - we are of this opinion because we "oldies" can compare different RPG UIs over time and then form ourselves well founded opinions on what works or not.

Deathdealer: On a serious note - you're right, of course, and that's why I wouldn't give them to you. It's sweet, sweet money, after all! I used to be a frequent traveller, so I had two old Steam accounts extra, and I milked those on every card as well on old laptops. It felt like I was breaking bad.

Heh! I even went so far as to reinstalling some titles to get at the cards. Good thing is that I'm out of card drops, so it will resolve itself. EDIT: And, oh! Steam got in touch with me after two days of my selling like crazy, just checking that I was legit. I proved it by clicking some links, and that was it.

I barely took notice of steam trading cards getting introduced, and when I did, I simply snorted at the notion - "Bah! Kids stuff!" However, a couple of days ago, I realized that those digital buggers were worth tiny bits of money on Steam Market, a place I had never ventured. Greedy thoughts went through my mind and I took stock of what games I had that were eligible for collecting such cards. I have dozens of games on Steam, I am a gamer after all, so it turned out to be quite a lot. Here's what I did: While working, I opened the starting page of all of the eligible games and turned down the volume in Options. And as I was plugging away, I noticed regular pop-ups of cards getting piled up in my inventory in Steam. I did this for three days. I ended up with a few lucky foils, some rare emoticons and heaps of collector cards. So, I put most of them up on the market, even Euro 0.01 backgrounds, and lo and behold! I can now buy both Witches of Brigmore for Dishonored and a dlc for Bioshock Infinite. Also, I got a few complete badges crafted for myself in the process. I rushed passed level 10 in Steam and I have a number of nice backgrounds to match. Now, I feel a bit dirty, the same I felt using the auction house in sly ways for Diablo 3. Even worse, I still dislike Steam's trading cards as a system, and I loathe Blizzard for what they did with that auction house of theirs.

It has been said before, but the dev schedule for PE may also turn out to be problematic, and I am one of those who'd gladly wait a couple of months, just to make sure that as many major bugs as possible have been ironed out and that content is meaty throughout. One bad thing about NWN2 was the sense that the ending felt rushed, including the dungeons and such. Obsids, please take your time on this one. It will be worth it.

Oby snacks? No, Scooby snacks! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHDYfoRYcqQ I love this tune, by the way.

Agreed. The game should integrate great leniency towards a plethora of playstyles, especially non-optimized variants. The difficulty slider and the ironman mode should whet the appetite of those who seek a harder take on the game. A broad latitude for party composition will be especially important. If a player wants to build a party with six monks, it should be possible to finish the game that way, although it should be a bit harder, and especially for certain encounters. Even going solo should be taken into consideration, but that's just my opinion.

Yuk! Some bug scrambled in a blender? Or buggy like hell? From here on, LA Noire is on my list.

I read it all on their official forums. There are many threads on these issues. Here is the most recent one: http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/785000-Save-Might-and-Magic-X-while-you-still-can!?s=9f9aa6ae9f911e0c947d8a173f98a9e5

Now I am sad. It seems the M&M they are making now, the X "Legacy", is more of a Legend of Grimrock-like game, but many times larger. Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted an experience resembling M&M VI, VII or VIII. I wanted some space Kreegan at the end, with lasers and all. I wanted to fly around and turn into a lich. I wanted riddles and special crafting. I wanted fruits in the trees and secret treasures beyond rocks. But I'm getting none of that. Bohoo!

Keyrock: It turns out you were right! I was far too optimistic on this game, perhaps because I backed it on Kickstarter, which I now regret. It is bordering on terrible, which is a sad fact indeed. Kingdoms of Amalur is a million times better, and that says it all, I reckon. I gave it several shots after the patches, but now I have uninstalled it and I will never touch the game again, not even with a stick wearing RPG-rose-tinted glasses.

I've had a lot of fun playing Skyrim as of late. I picked up the expansions over the summer super-cheap, and now I cram it with all sorts of mods, one of which is the Dishonored mod, so thanks for the tips, folks! It's fun to restrain oneself using those powers and roam around and sneak. I also downloaded the huge mod Falskaar. And I do recommend the mod which shows which books you have read or not (it works for all expansions). I took a random start too. Much more fun that way. Playing Skyrim with a toone of mods of my choice certainly makes Skyrim a more pleasant experience, and this time around I decided to try out crafting, which I normally don't use in games, and it's tolerable, at least for my gimped Corvo version of a pc.

Undead in all shapes and sizes is an absolute must! However, for every I will see in PE I'll most likely Moving vegetable creatures would be cool, but please make them Triffids-scary, and not outright disgusting, like this: