Keyrock

I'm back to Gothic 3. I've done everything in Cape Dun and Montera short of wiping out the nearby rebel camps, plus I cleared Gotha of undead and killed the demon. So, next I paid a visit to Faring and did a bit of questing around there. A lot of the stuff around Faring is kind of difficult for my current level and equipment, so it might be wise to go back through Montera and head off to Trelis. I think that area is more appropriate for where I'm at equipment wise.

I just installed it again after I gave up on the game a week or so after its disastrous launch. I haven't played it enough to properly judge it, but from the bit I played today it definitely has improved. For one, there are now multiple starting states, besides the regular awful campaign start. The new start satates also include different c0ckpit designs. Unfortunately, at least in the one different start state I tried, the annoying as **** co-pilot lady is still there and, to the best of my knowledge, there is still no way to jettison her ito the cold black of space. Performace of the game seems to have improved a bit, though it's still not very good, and there are more graphical options. The interface is a bit better now too, though still not great. My flightstick finally functions properly and you can now do most of your business without ever disembarking your ship into the dismal station interiors. Character models and animations are still horrifically bad, but at least they have a little more variety now and everyone doesn't look like a 90 year old woman. The game has definitely improved, but I still don't think I could recommend it with a clear conscience. Keep in mind that the sample size is quite small. I'll play it some more over the next few days, but unless something wows me that I haven't seen yet, I'll likely shelve it and go back to X3: Terran Conflict until a version 2.5 or 3.0 comes out.

Let's say you have a desktop and you have a laptop. Your desktop is powerful, but it's in your computer room/home office. Your laptop isn't very powerful, but it is very portable. You want to play a game on your couch in your living room on the TV. Bringing the laptop over to the TV is a heck of a lot easier than bringing your desktop over to the TV. Or, let's say that instead of a laptop, you have a HTPC always hooked up to your TV. The HTPC is only powerful enough to play video at 1080p and could probably run a few older or less demanding games, but isn't going to run any recent AAA type titles. You could, of course, lug the desktop into the living room and hook it up to the TV, but wouldn't it be a lot easier to stream to the HTPC?

Holy Funk! Holy Jazz Fusion! How is this even possible?

780Ti comes with DVI-D Dual-Link, DVI-I, DisplayPort, and HDMI outputs. The monitor comes with DVI-D Dual-Link, HDMI 1.4a, and D-Sub inputs. Both the DVI-D Dual-Link and HDMI 1.4a will allow me to run 1440p at 60Hz. I'll use the DVI-D to leave the HDMI open for potentially hooking up a WiiU in the future, if I ever get one (read: When Nintendo releases a proper Metroid for WiiU). As an aside, why do monitors still include a D-Sub input? Who still uses D-Sub?

Honestly, all these no name Korean monitors are all basically the same crapshoot. It's down to either AH-IPS or AHVA. I prefer VA, so I wound up going with this. There are several no name "brands" that are basically identical, so I went with the one that I liked best from an aesthetic point of view. All these Korean monitors basically use the same matrices as the name brands. The same manufacturer that sells to Benq, Asus, Samsun, and so on, when they get a batch returned because it didn't meet the customer's standards due to too high defect rate or whatever (they generally accept or reject an entire batch), they then sell that batch off to one of these no name Korean companies. What I can expect is a good internal matrix, and a roll of the dice on the quality of the housing and the quality of the assembly. The assembly you can usually take apart yourself with a screwdriver and put it back together proper if they did a half-assed job putting it together (relatively likely). It's generally a simple job, you don't need to be a rocket scientist, you just need to have some patience. Basically, it's a roll of the dice. There is going to be some backlight bleeding, that's expected, it's basically how much. Hopefully I don't get a bunch of dead pixels and horrific backlight bleeding, because RMAing it won't be fun. I'll let you folks know how it turns out. Wish me luck.

Here's a Let's Play video for Hover: Revolt of Gamers: Pretty good for a very early alpha.

I'm still very much undecided on monitors. I know I want a 27" 1440p monitor, beyond that... *shrugs* 1440p at 27" is about the right pixel density for my tastes. I'm not worried about text being too small, especially since, in many cases, I can simply adjust the DPI. Obviously, in many games I might not be able to adjust the font size, but my eyes are good enough to read small text... as long as I have my glasses on. I'll want it to have at least one HDMI (just one should be fine) input, just in case I get a WiiU in the future (When they put out a Metroid, and you gotta believe they will eventually, I'll likely break down and get one, because Metroid.) I'm thinking something along the lines of this. The contrast ratio is pretty good. Haven't heard too many reports of dead pixel problems on this one, though I may splurge and spend and extra couple bucks for the perfect pixel model. From what I've read this model is pretty good in the (lack of) ghosting department. No problems scaling down to 1080p or 720p. The biggest concern with it seems to be backlight bleeding, though that's kind of a crapshoot with IPS monitors in general. Edit: Found it on Ebay for $340 w/ free shipping. It's got both Dual-link DVI-D and HDMI 1.4a, which, if I'm not mistaken, can both do 1440p at 60 Hz, correct?

The ASRock mobo that is my current front-runner has 2 PCIe x1 slots between the first (closest to the CPU) PCIe 3.0 slot and the second. With the EVGA model 780Ti being a relatively "slim" model that takes up 2 slots (some aftermarket coolers stick out further making the card take up almost 3 entire slots), that would give me a full slot's width of empty space between the 2 cards if I were to SLI with that mobo and those cards.

The SLI point is a good one, and I just can't answer that one at the moment. It will come down to whether there will be anything in the future to push my system enough to warrant a second card. Also, at that point, will it be more economical to sell my current card and get a GTX 980 or whatever instead? Basically, I'm not going to worry about it too much, beyond getting a motherboard with at least 2 PCIe 3.0 slots. I'll likely get that EVGA 780Ti I linked to, and if I do SLI it in the future, and temperatures become a problem, maybe I can engineer some kind of angled sleeve over it to direct the air away from the other card, space permitting? I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I'm thinking of getting this video card. With the sale price and the rebate, it comes out to about $660 (plus Uncle Sam's cut). Factory overclocked, not a big deal, but a plus, as I'd rather not mess with that if I don't have to, as it's a bit more complicated (tedious) under Linux. Comes with a free copy of Watch Dogs, but that's any 780Ti, of 780, or 770, or 760 right now.

Not sure I understand what you mean, links to explain? So, Nintendo is putting out this silly Tomagotchi Life game for 3DS. I haven't played it, but it looks all types of weird. Apparently you couldn't do same sex marriages in the game, so the LGBT Nazi Mafia got the outrage machine going. Nintendo was all, look, it's just a game, we weren't even thinking about it, we weren't trying to make a social statement. but by that time the LGBT Nazi Mafia was already throwing rocks at Nintendo and setting their buildings on fire, so Nintendo had Mario and Link french kiss or have butsechs or something. Note: I may have exaggerated a tad, but that's the gist of the story. That's an interesting story, thanks for explaining Glad to help out. And don't mind my colorful creative license used for dramatic flair, I didn't follow the story closely enough to know exactly how extreme the outrage was, likely it was reasonable, and it was just the media blowing things way out of proportion, as usual. I'm assuming it went something like this: I don't think there was any malice on the part of Nintendo, they made a game, they allowed you to marry in the game, and, Japan being a very traditional society, they set the game up so you could only marry someone of the opposite sex, without really giving it much thought. Some people noticed, some got upset, the media blew everything out of proportion, so, to save face, Nintendo had Mario and Link make out or something. I'm assuming they'll probably patch in same sex marriage into the game, if they haven't already, which is fine.

Not sure I understand what you mean, links to explain? So, Nintendo is putting out this silly Tomagotchi Life game for 3DS. I haven't played it, but it looks all types of weird. Apparently you couldn't do same sex marriages in the game, so the LGBT Nazi Mafia got the outrage machine going. Nintendo was all, look, it's just a game, we weren't even thinking about it, we weren't trying to make a social statement. but by that time the LGBT Nazi Mafia was already throwing rocks at Nintendo and setting their buildings on fire, so Nintendo had Mario and Link french kiss or have butsechs or something. Note: I may have exaggerated a tad, but that's the gist of the story.

I played a bit of Race the Sun this morning. Really fantastic game. It's one of those just one more level type addictive games. I had to pull myself away so I wouldn't be late to work. I'm definitely looking forward to playing some more. The minimalist graphics work really well and are surprisingly pleasing to the eye. It's like flying at high speed through an Apple commercial, minus the pretentiousness.

Are the Qunari capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electrical power?

Great googly moogly, why was I not notified of this earlier? The illegitimate love child of Mirror's Edge and Jet Set Radio? Yes, please. Give it to me. Inject it into my veins!

Peyton Manning arrested on drug charges. No, not that Peyton Manning. It's an 18 year old woman named Peyton Manning. No word on whether she'll get a Papa John's endorsement out of this.

Pretty much every second of combat they've shown, in this trailer and the previous ones, is all cinematics, leading me to believe that this will be a Push The Awesome Button To Win type game. I hope I'm wrong.

I'm playing Rubik's Cube on Google. I suck at Rubik's Cube.

Omega Cabal starring sexy German mercenary Elsa?

With the community fixpack it easily looks better than Risen. It's unfortunate it needs an SSD to not stutter like a madman. The stuttering doesn't happen too often if you don't use the extended visibility option, it still happens, though, which is unfortunate. The other issue is with lighting. I've never gotten the game to run with either Bloom or HDR selected, it's just a black screen, and this is with both AMD and Nvidia GPUs going back as far as 5 years ago until today. With "standard" lighting the graphics display fine, but as soon as you use a light source, such as a torch or a fire arrow, the game goes into slideshow framerate and it will stay that way until you restart it. I've never found a solution for this problem, not in all the years I've been playing it, not with any version of the community patch, not with any combination of options, not with any GPU. It's really annoying and just something I have to be wary of and put up with (namely, never use torches or fire arrows ever for any reason). It probably does that with spells also, but I don't play casters in Gothic, so it's a moot point.

The price difference between the EVO and the Pro is very substantial, much too substantial to my tastes. The EVO is about 50 cents per GB while the Pro is about 80 cents per GB.

Quite possibly. It's going to be very tough to top Careless Whisper. Dat sax.

If it makes you feel better, the Sawx got thoroughly humiliated by the Tigers over the weekend. But, whatever. It's still very early in the season and nobody is running away with the AL East.

As far as SSDs go, I'm thinking of getting a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB. Thoughts?