Komag

There aren't spoiler tags here... .... ... Mauritz Cornelis Escher's "Ascending and Descending" I mostly knew because just a few weeks ago I spend an hour or two staring at this: http://www.voidgamers.com/channel/HirstArt....356.r.386.html

I just watched it today; it's unbelievable this crap could ever get made! It's about a small group of college kids who get all caught up in the game "Mazes and Monsters" (obviously "Dungeons & Dragons") and one of kids (Tom Hanks) goes off the deep end and can't separate fantasy and reality, beleiving he's the character off on some crazy quest to join the Great Hall. It's based on a book by Rona Jaffe, who bullcrapped his way through the stupid fake incident of some supposed boy genius who committed suicide in the steam tunnels of some university while playing D&D. That never happened, AT ALL, but the media back then jumped on the story and moms all over the country suddenly banned their kids from playing D&D. I remember being a kid and hearing about this evil new game, blah blah blah. All pure bullcrap of course, and to this day there isn't a SINGLE proven incident of D&D directly causing any bad thing to happen, ever. So anyway, the whole movie is a take on that story, and a bad one at that. Being from 1982 it reeks of old crappiness throughout, such as a scene where the girl suddenly puts two and two together and is trying to remember more details about something, so one of the guys gets all anxious in her face with "C'mon, THINK! TRY TO REMEMBER! WHAT DID HE SAY?!?!" and the other guy also yells at her "Yeah, WHAT WAS IT??? C'MON, TELL USSSS!!!!!!!!!!" all stupidly dramatic like 6 year olds would act it out in their first grade play. Oh well, it's neither here nor there. I just needed to vent I guess.

If anyone has experience with these games (Baldur's Gate 1, exp Sword Coast, 2 Amn, exp Baal or something), can you advise me where to start if I wanted to? I just remember like five years ago I installed part 1 and I right away hated the controls for some reason, but I can't remember. Plus, I've always heard tons of great things about 2, but not 1. Should I just play Baldur's Gate 2 (plus expansion) and forget 1? Will I miss anything significant? I don't have endless time, so the quick answer "just play both!!!!" is not the right answer, unless there is really a good reason I should play 1. Thanks!

I guess it means we won't be able to solar-sail to Alpha Centauri, drats!

He must have been talking about the contest then - I've never worked with him

I just checked the past few weeks' ended auctions on eBay and it seems that 6800's (not GT or Ultra or anything) with 128 memory go for around $70-85, pretty cheap! 6800 scores MUCH better than 6600 in graphics benchmarks, and even better than 6600 GT, but in that case it's much closer.

So far it's been a great gas saver for me. I've clocked it three times and it averages about 75 mpg, very nice compared to our 14 mpg SUV! I ride it all around town instead of using the SUV whenever I can, and in just the past month it's saved me around $50 Plus since it's a second vehicle, it's MUCH more convenient for my wife and I, instead of constantly figuring each other's rides to and from work, store, etc. That also saves gas because there are less round trips (when giving a ride to drop someone off you end up doing two round trips instead of just one).

The FX5200 is MUCH worse performing than your Ti4600. It just has some newer shaders. If you want an upgrade, the logical step is a 6600, a 6600 GT, or a 6800. It will definitely help a lot, even with a 1.6 processor.

We ALWAYS need more textures, you can't have enough. We have very few right now in fact.

???

I've bought and sold tons of electronics/computer parts on eBay. The mainest thing is to only buy from someone with at least 100 feedbacks, and at least a 98% feedback rating (over 99% is preferable, and not hard to maintain if you're a good honest seller). Check their recent auctions to make sure they've sold other electronics/computer parts in the past, rather than having all feedbacks from selling books or from their own purchases or something. Basically, they need a lot of SELLING feedbacks, from selling similar type items that you're looking at. If you just follow those basic buyer-savvy guidelines, you'll pretty much have no problems ever. It may sound a bit daunting or risky, but it's really not, and eBay nearly always has the best prices possible so it's can really be worth it. Getting a card for $60 or $90 versus $100 or $150 is a nice thing.

Or a vanilla 6800, much better than a 6600, not much more cost. 6800 GT though is a jump in price, but much better card that can be overclocked nicely (it's what I have, runs GREAT!). I had a 6800 previously and it worked great, sold for about $90 on eBay, probably a good way for you to go. Since you have a Ti4600 that worked in the slot fine, you probably don't have some ancient 1x AGP slot or anything like that. Very likely it's an 8x or almost positively at least a 4x slot, which will be fine for any AGP card you can find.

sorry, never played the game

was that post for reals?

It's not like it's worth arguing about, not like anyone is going to convert. oDDity spitefully hates many things that most people like, it's a natural sign that he's cool or different or something. That's life.

I would say that MIGHT suck (but not infinitely), but it might be cool.

Common newbie mistake I guess

But what you're asking is still valid in other situations where a neat solution won't work

Yay, Sept 22 is here and the Water Contest missions are released! See http://www.keepofmetalandgold.com for all the details!

There were a lot of motorcycles in those pics - hopefully they pull them off right in the game!

I see deisel offered most places, probably 2/3 of stations I think. I don't mind gas prices of $3. People complain a lot since it was about $2 just a year or two ago. (plus my motorcycle gets about 75 mpg, and I ride it a lot instead of the car) My older sister and her family now spend about $450 a month on gas, when it used to be around $300. So I'm thinking, if $150/mo is breaking your bank, then you are living too closee to the edge of your means! If you make $4000/mo you shouldn't be spending $3800 of it. You should be spending more like $3000 and investing/saving the other $1000. That way when gas goes up you can easily absorb the extra $150.

Diesel cars are VERY rare but a few are around. I don't think any cars made here use deisel, so the only ones around are imports, but I could be wrong (I'm not talking about big pickup trucks - we have some of those using deisel)

hehe, nice poll. Yeah of course everyone wants more contests because they're fun and produce some great little missions. I don't know when there will be another one, probably not for a LONG time. I doubt I'll try another T3Ed contest, as pretty much NOBODY is doing anything with that editor. (quite a travesty I think) I don't plan to do any more Dromed contests - this water one was meant as a "last hurah". So probably it will be TDM in a couple years. About them not being allowed to talk about my banning, I just don't care how they handle it over there anymore. TTLG is part of my past.

Is there any new news? I'm interested in the game as well, although it's never a good idea to take all the "features" at face value this early in development. Similar super advanced AI systems were touted for Oblivion and didn't come through in the end, same for a dozen other games I can think of.

All good points. I think prorams like SpeedTree are best thought of as a useful tool when appropriate and not a creative cop-out