how often do you see the world and dream of a simpler time? before terrorism, before economic downturn, before all the voices in my head and all their terrible terrible secrets?
well minesweeper is just a great way to remember that magical fantasy land never existed and the voices were always there.
Minefields exist that were laid down decades ago, many still exist to some extent in some territories. They have endured longer than the ideologies that started the wars that led to them being created and laid down. Every now and again you hear in the news shells and mines from distant wars gone by, undetonated until come across by some oblivious civilian. Neither enemy nor ally because the cause the weapon was created for is obsolete and irrelevant.
all the blue countries are those that are members of the Ottawa Treaty, who have accepted the ban on production, stockpile or use of anti-personnel mines. The countries that haven't signed are ones with disproportionately assertive foreign policies.
Hello
Have you played American Truck Simulator?
I'm looking for some real truck packs for this game
Something like this (but there is single truck mods only)
I don't think I've made it crystal clear on this forum about how much I FREAKING LOVE the Witcher series now.
The Witcher Wild Hunt (which was released a year ago this month) was easily one of the most incredible games I've ever played. A good guys CD Projekt Red have been making awesome DLC for this game, with the new expansion due this month. Details below: (shameless copy and paste, bite me)
The Numbers:
30+ hour adventure.
Over 90 new quests.
Over 40 new points of interest.
Dynamic points of interest system. Killing bandits in their main hideout will affect the number of enemies in surrounding camps.
14000 lines of dialogue (Hearts of Stone had 6000).
100 individual pieces of armour (including new Witcher sets).
More than 20 new monsters.
New Game + maximum level increased to 100.
Armour and Weapons:
New Witcher armour class ‘Grandmaster’.
New armour merchant who is the only one able to craft this level of Witcher gear.
Can get blue, hooded armour from Witcher 2, armour from Witcher 1, Ursine Witcher armour with furry pauldron that was in the artbook but cut from the main game.
More than 30 new weapons.
Can now dye armour. Dyes can be bought from a merchant, crafted or looted. Only obtainable in Toussaint. Pink is among the colours.
You can acquire the golden, plumed armour of the Touissant knights, and the same goes for Roach! New Mutation System:
Mutations. 12 new abilities. Mechanic is unlocked through a quest started by a letter from Yennefer. Examples: Signs can have critical hits causing the enemy to explode, instead of dying Geralt is healed and has damage immunity, opponents knocked down by AARD freeze and die instantly. Can only utilise one at a time.
The UI resembles Witcher 2’s character customization screen. Basically they’re super strong abilities/stat boosts that require mutagens and skill points to unlock. Can only pick one at a time but you have to unlock earlier ones to get the others.
Despite unlocking it at level 34+ (recommended level to venture to Touissant) the system and anything you’ve unlocked carries over to New Game+ so you won’t have to unlock it again.
UI Changes:
Greatly redesigned User Interface.
Can now rotate Geralt in stats screen.
Books moved to glossary.
Upon looting a readable item a little notification pops up in bottom left of screen. Upon clicking in the right stick (on Xbox One controller), you can read the text of recently looted books, letters, notes etc without having to go to the menu, inventory, finding the right book and so on.
Option to remove fish-eye effect from witcher sense.
Home Base:
Geralt gets his own motherfucking vineyard.
It’s called Corvo Bianco.
You can renovate it with large sums of money, the option I saw was for 5000 Orens.
You can add a greenhouse of sorts where you can grow herbs for all your witcher potion needs, an armourer’s table, a stable for Roach (with its own stat bonuses), upgrade your bed, renovated interior and exterior, secret lab, guest room.
Guest room where old friends will come to stay. They said the names Triss and Yennefer, but were reluctant to reveal the names of anyone else who might visit. Surprise Iorveth/Saskia visit??
Scaffolding and workers will appear after you choose to build something. Each change takes a certain amount of in-game time to complete, but you can just meditate til everything’s done.
Can display your armour, weapons, paintings and books.
Some paintings can be bought, or specially made, others are obtained through quests.
Music:
Over 2 hours of new musical content in the game.
The title screen song is a reworked version of the Bruxa song from the CGI trailer.
Other Tidbits:
Can enter Geralt in a tournament, creating his own logo and team colours.
Can enter under a fake name, although you may not fool everyone.
You can of course race horses, but other events involve crossbow shooting and a grand melee. Seems like there will be more but they didn’t want to say.
No new unique weather effects, but the lighting has been prepared specially to reflect the feeling of Southern Europe.
No new hairstyles.
As of the preview event (3/5/16) they were still working on the final boss fight.
Grass has been optimised, more of it but less expensive.
Improvements to cloth tech (see interview for more detail).
New sword sheathing option. With this new option Geralt no longer automatically unsheathes his sword at the start of combat. Also, he no longer switches weapons to match the opponent. The player has to do it on their own.
Nilfgaard and Northern Kingdoms physical Gwents cards exist, unsure if they’re being packaged with this expansion.
A FREAKING 30 HOUR EXPANSION FOR 28 NZD.
CD Projekt Red deserves a medal of honor or something. They are the best developers, really respect and care about their player base and don't Jew you out of your money.
I can't wait to have my own vineyard...
The new map Toussaint looks so pretty:
And the new UI looks so great too, way better than the old:
Exciting times! We're on Cape Wrath, the Martell hier is treating with the Golden Company.
A fun little aside about the Children of the Forest, and one of the serjeants we are introduced to of the Golden Company is a crannogman (I think, from the neck, same ethnicity as the Reeds) which is interesting. Maybe it's Howland Reed? absolutely unlikely but hey, who knows in this crazy crazy universe.
Just in case book readers are not aware, GRRM has released several chapters from the upcoming The Winds Of Winter. We've had so far:
Barristan Selmy I
Tyrion I
Mercy
Theon Greyjoy/Reek
Arianne Martell I and now!Arianne Martell II!
This release might coincide with the show deciding to remove the Martells (and all book related Dornish content) from the show. Silver linings to be found in the entrails of a plot so butchered~
It looks like this new version introduces a "district" concept. Some specialised buildings will be contained in hexes exterior of your city hex, like how farms and mines and stuff are now. So if someone invades you they can stomp on a science hex without having to reduce your entire city. Other "districts" might exist for industry, military, and others? Also, when building wonders, they must be build on the appropriate hex, rather than the city's hex being the correct type. This makes choice of general area more important than ever, and forgives a poor choice for the specific hex that you found your city on.
It also looks like science is getting revamped. Completing "quests" will increase the speed that you acquire specfic technologies. An example was construction of a quarry would give you 50% boost on researching masonry.
It looks like the AI will be better, specifically less arbitrary, will "agendas" that are like random modifiers on set personalities. It sounds like the personalities will have a greater effect on how each AI civ plays it's game.
I was converting a VCR to digital and was thinking what's on this tape. So here are a few. Youtube links are included to see just how bad YouTube compresses 480p content.
The PS Vita was released in 2012. So the games must be "Classics" by Xbox standards.
The obvious game to start with is Killzone: Mercenary. A good shooter on a portable.
Admin GG's Retro Hardware and Game Pickups Collection Thread
Welcome to my Retro pickups thread! As you all know (because im sure I've told everyone I've ever been in contact with) I built a sweet ass arcade machine recently: http://thevideogameforum.com/showthread.php?tid=390
Now this arcade can emulate everything from early Atari to PS1, Sega Dreamcast (even PSP now) and everything in-between. I mainly use the arcade for actual arcade games, however I've been diving loads into all the awesome consoles of the old days since I have access to entire game libraries at my fingertips.
So begins the start of my problem: being able to play every game on every console from the 90s and below sort of back fired on me. Instead of scratching that itch of being able to play any game from any console I chose, it really just made me want to play those games on their original hardware.
So I bought a few retro imitation USB controllers like NES and SNES controllers and plugged them into the arcade. It felt good to play the games more natively, but it still just quite wasn't doing it for me.
The next thing you know, I bought an original NES. And so begins my new stupid expensive hobby.
I am now a proud owner of an original 1985 NES console. It's the front loader version. My initial purchase bought me the console, a controller, and the games Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt (both goddam classics. Since then I've acquired a few more games for it and a NES Zapper. One of the first home light guns released.
The console itself is in very nice condition, almost no yellowing at all (whats yellowing you ask? Basically the reaction of UV light and the bromine they put in plastics back in the day). It works great too. It's been region unlocked, which was super easy to do for a NES (just clip a pin inside it) so it can play PAL and NTSC games. It's a PAL console itself and I'm hoping I'll get a few years out of it. It has no moving parts inside (no disk drives etc.) but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't paranoid that this 35+ year hardware might just blow at some point.
I paid $190 for it, which is fairly reasonable considering its great condition. They go for alot more on Trademe and sometimes less to but condition etc. varies widely.
The console is pretty basic. Games go in front, you turn it on, any issue hit reset.
The iconic NES controller is probably my favorite though. Its not particularly comfortable after awhile, and my hands are too big for it, but I love the buttons and dpad.
So here's my collection for it so far:
From left to right we have: Castlevania, Defender of the Crown, Wild Gunman, Operation Wolf, RYGA, Super Mario Bros + Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Soccer, and about 190 games in 1 cart.
Castlevania for those who know is a super popular series and a rare game to have, costs me $50 alone. Wild Gunman, Duck Hunt, and Operation Wolf are all light gun games and boy do I love me some light gun games. Duck Hunt has to be my fav next to Wild Gunman. Such classics.
And here's the setup in action. The NES Zapper is so comfy and a such a satisfying gun to use. Wild Gunman is pictured on the TV.
My first impressions when using it were 'I think I've gone too far back'. I thought it would be cool and all to have an NES, but damn this shit is old. All in all I'm happy with my pickup though.
Not everything I'll pick up and be posting in this thread will be considered 'retro'. I would consider the following 'old school' but not 'retro' just yet.
Now that I have the bug for collecting shit I've been checking out second hand stores and auction houses. I scored an original Xbox for $20 in an auction with no cords or anything. Cords are cheap enough and I'm lucky enough to be borrowing a controller for now.
The Xbox works great an only needed a clean up. The day after getting it I looked in a bargain mart and shit you not found Halo 1+2 and a bunch of other great xbox games for like $10. So I've already got some decent games to go with it.
I wanna try collect some decent multiplayer games as the xbox is natively 4 player which is great.
All together on a decent sized CRT TV in my garage <3
I plan to continue to update this thread as I collect more gear. Currently I've got a couple more things to show but I'll do that in my next post.
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New UI
