Daeval

I saw one of those santas the other day. Those things are frightening. The way it moves its hips, it looks like you could get a mrs. santa and make them grind.

I've been thinking about turning the series into a set of mini-movies. Trying to watch the older episodes is annoying since there's several minutes of "recap" at the beginning, not to mention so many long flashbacks mid-episode. I want to cut out the intro and ending sequences (except the first and last for the combined episodes) and the recap time at the beggining (finding a good place to cut it to include the splash intro that starts each episode). Would make it much easier to watch multiple episodes. I'm thinking too much work for charity though. Either that or I'll burn 'em on a DVD with each episode broken up into intro/recap/episode/outro. This is more likely. I'd probably buy 'em if there was a decent american release, but considering the number of episodes, I may have to win the lotto first.

Ok, now that we're all alive again, what happens when we die? And furthermore, how do we know who attacked us?

Come now, you should never logically "build a bunch of the good ones and charge". Most people do that, but they're all newbs. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> In most older RTSes, this is the usually the best option in terms of difficulty/reward. In the C&C games it was tanks, in warcraft it was grunts or berzerked ogres, in starcraft it was zerg or siege tanks, etc etc. There were much better ways to make things interesting, but that's what it usually came down to. And you could do that in DoW, and I suppose a lot of people probably do, but DoW rewards strategically thinking players more, and much earlier in a game, than other RTSes. By the time you build your second important building, you already have choices to make about what your troops will be equipped to handle best, and those choices can make or break an attack. Once you get into the higher tech levels, units compliment each other and counteract opposing units much more than in most RTSes.

I find this funny. When I worked at SOE, all our calls were about Everquest, but once in a while I'd have to deal with someone who couldn't connect to Infantry or got banned and called to biatch about it. We used to play it on our lunch breaks because it was quick and easy to just join a game and screw around for a while, and they frowned on us putting non-sony stuff on the computers (for potential legal reasons). The community behind Infantry was so jaded and ornery that I never played for very long. It's probably the only online gaming community more anal than Gunbound's.

Dang, she is cute.. hehe.. I liked that the robot had attitude too

I'm a self-studied buddhist, but in what most would probably call a philosophical way, more than a spiritual, although it's spiritual for me. I love the basic principles, the things that are said to be core to the teachings of the Buddha - the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path, etc. Those make sense to me; their truth and positive effects are visible with my own still-living eyes. At least, as long as you think of enlightenment as a really great state of normal existance (rather than some miraculous physical transformation), and reincarnation as something that was included because it was, culturally, a commonly accepted fact in that part of the world at that time. However, I don't really like all the ritual and dogma that have been added over the years by the various branches of Buddhism. Things like "only monks can achieve enlightenment" and "you drink magical soup after you die," etc. Making those types of things an important part of your religion, and therefore ideally an important part of your daily life, seems contrary to the basic teachings to me. I'm reminded of the story of the monk who burned wooden budda statues to keep him and his fellow monks from freezing. It's the basic principles that matter, not the book or the ritual. As for the afterlife.. I'm up in the air. There are a million different takes on the afterlife, and not one has any solid proof over another. Maybe we get reincarnated? Maybe we spend eternity in heaven or hell? Maybe we get our hearts weighed by Anubis or maybe we just cease to exist? I'm open to all interpretations, but I'm not willing to throw my lot in with any one of them.

I want my 5 or 6 minutes back. I can't imagine what would drive a college student to spend as much time as that must have taken, on THAT. Let alone multiple college students. We're all going to hell.

Oooh, you're right, John Belushi is way cooler than Jesus. Consider my vote recast.

Eh, I thought Burnout 3 was pretty cool. It's nothing revolutionary, but it's a fun Arcade Racer and the crash levels (where you try to cause the biggest crashes) are unique to the series and a lot of fun. And I'll second for Warhammer: Dawn of War. It's probably the best RTS game I've played since the original Command and Conquer. The races are varied but balanced, the "strategic point" based gameplay puts the emphasis on strategy more than running peons back and forth, and the individual units make for better tactics than "build a bunch of the good one and charge." The only thing that bothers me about it are the voices.

My birthday's in Dec (the 2nd), so I make a combined list sometime in Nov. This years, in no particular order: 1. Angels & Visitations by Neil Gaiman 2. Gran Turismo 4 (Nevermind, pushed back) 3. King of Fighters 2002/2003 (Nevermind.. damnit) 4. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (For PC, got for my B-Day, w00t!) 5. Better than Ezra - Live At The House of Blues in New Orleans 6. Counting Crows - Films About Ghosts 7. DVD Burner - Any speed, internal, in black to match the rest of my computer. 8. Video Card to replace my aging GeForce 4. - I don't know what the market looks like now but I have an uncle who I trust to make the best decision. 9. Bedsheets (got for my b-day) 10. Books about World Mythology / Legends - Unabridged and clearly translated stories with scholarly notes are ideal (although I'm resigned to their rarity). I'm interested in pretty much anything under this category, so I keep this vague just to see what I get. This has been on my list for the past few years and I've gotten some neat stuff. I also wouldn't mind a gig of RAM, but the vid card is already on there, so I figure I'll see what that does for me and if I still want it I'll upgrade with christmas/birthday money. And Cinder, are the new controllers so you'll have enough for the new kid?

I'd bring back Jesus and make him clear up some things in this book everyone bitches about. Or make him write an autobiography. Or maybe somebody older, who'd get a bigger audience, like Moses. I guess you could get some things cleared up no matter who you invited back.

You're not wrong really, just getting ahead of yourself. Once you know how to code you can design the layout first in photoshop, and then code it using html or whatever. They really go hand in hand, and you need both from the start. To use the house analogy again... You can't physically build a nice house without having an idea of what you want it to look like in the end. Therefore, you need to have some artistic design first. On the other hand, it's pointless to make an artistic design before you have any idea how to put it together - you might design a house that looks really nice, but if it won't support the roof, you're screwed. So, you need to learn the basic principles of bulding (code), and maybe practice on little things, before you try to come up with an artistic design that you could actually build. Once you know your limits with the code, then you can build a design in photoshop that you could make happen, and then make it happen with code. It's confusing.. basically, start doing HTML tutorials and you'll start to get it.

See above. Photoshop is not a site design tool, it's an art program. You need to program the design and then make the art a part of it. Hence, if you want an interesting design, you need to learn some HTML and maybe some CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) before you worry about photoshop so much. Think of the site's design like the wood and metal frame of a house. It's not pretty to look at, but it's the functional part. That's what you have to code. Once you have the walls in place, then you can start painting them the way you like. That's where photoshop comes in. Although, once you know what you can and can't program, photoshop is great for laying things out beforehand.

sounds like you're getting ahead of yourself. Learn some HTML and maybe some StyleSheets and then look at dreamweaver and photoshop.

At least in California, you are supposed to leave enough room between you and the car in front that you could stop. We all know this isn't always how it really works. Good luck with the case man. You're not going to be at fault for the whole thing, but at least where I'm at it would be difficult to avoid paying for your damage to the cab. Maybe if they can't tell who did what damage it'll work out better.

Isn't it usually good ettiquite to search before you post incase it's already been covered at length, in multiple threads, including just about anything with the word "anime" in the topic title?

Does it split up players by server? I haven't tried to log into anything but #1. I have a thief named, believe it or not, Daeval.

The little kid anime imported by big companies (like pokemon, yugioh, etc) is total crap. As far as kids cartoons go, the american stuff is, as a whole, a lot better. But there is a lot of good anime that is targetted at an older audience, and that fills a niche western animation hasn't even really tried (IE, animated entertainment with as much depth as the best PG13 or R rated movies). Judging the entire genre of japanese animation based on the after-school shows is like judging the whole of American entertainment based on Nickelodeon (http://www.nick.com/), or the whole of American Literature on R.L. Stine.

Yeah, it's pretty darn repetetive. I'll probably mess around a little longer because I just started getting skills, but I am tiring of it already. Anyone play Gunbound? That's what this reminds me of, different genre, similar art style and dress up options. I think it was another korean game or something. That was a cool game.

DLed this last night and gave it a whirl. It's extremely simple but stupidly addicting. They captured the drawing elements of an MMORPG without all the bullshit (although some bullshit, like crafting, I would have welcomed). I played it for about an hour on the keyboard, and then bothered to setup joy2key. Believe me, it is 10x more enjoyable on a joystick. Just to make it easier, I made JoyToKey presets that toggle between normal mode and mouse mode, so I can use my PS1-style pad for everything but typing. This makes it a lot like playing a Super Nintendo game. Here's my joy2key presets, just put 'em in your JoyToKey directory and select one of the presets before you start Maple Story. http://www.geocities.com/daeval_sx8/MapleStoryJoyToKey.zip And a quick rundown of the controls: http://www.geocities.com/daeval_sx8/README...toryPresets.txt

A lot of the challenge in the 3D GTA games comes not from difficult challenges, but from crappy controls outside the car.

I like anime and all (although I'm extremely picky about it, no DBZ or pick-your-brand-of-mecha battles for me, thank you), but even I know that the words "anime" and "hip" don't belong in the same sentence. That said, the most popular mainstream anime right now is probably something on adult swim. On the net though, it's probably Naruto, although that should be dethroned soon considering the most recent reactions.

Both. SpikeTV is almost as bad as MTV. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've heard a lot of bad things about Pike TV... So, it's a TV channel that specializes in games, am I right? Are they biased or just unprofessional? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It's not so much games tv as "guy tv". I think that's how they were advertising anyway. Videogames are "cool" so they're on there.

Glad to finally see an honest review for this one. In the latest GamePro (I get it free 'cause of an old fileplanet subscription, so sue me), they actually kind of delve into the "is GTA still worth the hype?" article that isn't too bad. I didn't read the whole thing yet though, just skimmed it. The basic point seems to be that the gameplay in GTA III was kinda half-assed, and they've tacked on a bunch of new and mostly extraneous features since, but never really adressed the core issues.