LucidMagic.net

For me under 10 my rig would only boot up half the time, the internet was much slower and i usually had to turn it off by holding the power button to force a shut down because it kept locking up. It makes sens why its free right now. It prevents people demanding refunds. Perhaps later on with larger updates it will improve.

I am still playing. It is one of the few current games that my rig can run. It's too old for the latest titles.

Found it. Not a very large area but it is packed full of cows, and chests. Also the health globes that drop are t-bone steaks, yum!

I have been thinking about some of my favorite web comics and intend to share them with all of you as well as my thoughts on them.

Stand Still, Stay Silent -  http://sssscomic.com/index.php
To start I shall give you a link to one that I am very impressed by. The story is called Stand Still, Stay Silent. Its a post apocalyptic tales where the center of known civilization is Scandinavia. The main characters at the moment at like the Scooby Doo team who are waaaaaaaay out of their element. The story gets rolling slowly with a long intro but once you are past that the scary stuff begins. The art is beautiful and creepy at the same time.
The art work is incredible. Lots of detailed sketch-like drawings mixed with watercolor landscapes. Very scary monsters.




Order of the Stick - http://www.giantitp.com/index.html
Story: A classic mix of D&D heroes on a quest to vanquish evil where the fate of the world balances preciously on the roll of a die, literally. Very funny lots of geeky humor.
Art: Very simple and fun. Look at my own avatar for an example.

Erfworld - http://www.erfworld.com/erf_stream/view
Story: A Game Master from the real world gets summoned into a world where the table top battle game mechanics are the reality. He is to be the perfect warlord to lead the armies of Gobwin Knob to conquer the world. A nice balance in the story all around. Humor, drama, and intrigue mix nicely.
Art: Like the story it is neither too simple nor ornate. Also after the first book the author began a mixed format of comic pages and prose short chapters. It works well.

Darths and Droids - http://www.darthsanddroids.net/
Story: Star Wars as if it was played out as a table top game. Lots of humor as the players try and work or weasel their way through the improbable situations the game master presents them with. Started with Phantom Menace and now is about to start Return of the Jedi.
Art: Screen capture. Takes actual still images from the films and arranges them in comic book format to fit the story.

Planet of Hats - http://www.mezzacotta.net/planetofhats/
Story: From one of the team of Darths and Droids comes a Star Trek recap comic. Each page gives a summary of one Original series Star Trek episode in comic book layout. It celebrates what made the show good and pokes fun at the now outdated concepts.
Art: Very simple but works well for the intention. This comic was created as a side project of the creator partially with the intention of teaching himself to draw.

Partially Clips - http://partiallyclips.com/
Story: Clip art and jokes. Its presented in a three panel comic strip fashion. Neat humor for most of the time. It gets pretty weird often but refreshing. Much like the strip Red Meat for those who remember it.
Art: Each strip uses a piece of clip art from a large collection. Same image in all three panels.

Spinnerette - http://www.spinnyverse.com/
Story: A college girl turns into a superhero with spider powers kinda like Spiderman but not. Plenty of humor playing directly on the improbable lives of superheroes in real life. Episodic stories that do not necessarily need to come together in a particular order.
Art: Variable. Sometimes it has a very manga style to it and others its more western. At current it is in a story that involves silver age comic styling.

Girl Genius - http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Story: Action, adventure, Romance, Mad Science! If Europe was ruled and fought over by mad scientists and their mechanical creations this is what you would have. Follow the exploits of young Agatha Hetrodyne as she uncovers her heritage and see if she will use her genius for good or for awesome! A good mix of madcap and witty humor will drag you along with it whether you like it or not.
Art: Very well detailed and vividly colored. It's good to take an extra look at it after reading to see everything.

Post your links to comics you recommend here.

Same error message for me. Also, no I don't play on Arelith anymore, it just happened to be the last server that i used to direct connect to. It's been a while since I even started up NWN. Still, its on there.

Picked up a new item for my wizard today. It added over 300K DPS.

Sucks Smaug's Wyvern ass.

I went to see it tonight. As I write this the film is not even a quarter of the way through yet. I enjoyed the first two films which I saw in the 2D standard format. The visual style of the 3D high frame rate, as stated above. I will as briefly as I can describe why.

The 3D aspect: Its basically a multiplane effect. Disney invented this for their animated films in the early 20th century to give their features a bit more suimulated depth. It worked very well. Video games emplyed this tactic during the transition from 8 bit to 16 bit systems. It also worked well. In the case of this film it looks likes a bunch of 2D live cells sliding over each other.  When an object breaks across all the planes (Bard's first arrow shot) to look like it moves towards or away from you it looks completely ill fitting.

High framerate: This brought all the action into super high definition all the time. Human eyes don't actually see moving objects, especially fast moving objects that clearly. Lucasfilm developed a method for stop motion animation that was dubbed "Go Motion" to create a more natural look. They just nudged the object being filmed just a bit on each frame take to blur the image slightly. The high rate makes fight action a bit more clear but adds too much to the rest. I have seen high frame rate 2D versions of the prior films and they are fine.

So the irony is that all the tech and effort that went into this presentation to make it look more real and immersive actually makes it look super fake.

My first comment about it while watching it was, "This looks like a video game." It would be cool if it was.  After five minutes I walked out. This is the first time I ever walked out on a film. My disbelief could not be suspended because the visual storm caused my flight of fancy to be canceled before it even boarded at the terminal.

If you go to see this movie, choose 2D. Frame rate is optional.

Oh and Smaug has two hind legs and two wings as fore limbs instead of the four legged and two winged dragon as Tolkien himself originally drew for the book. So the movie Smaug is a wyvern.

Getting off my soapbox now.

I just got invited to Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm Alpha. Downloading it now to try it out.

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/game/

Pork loin rolls. They feature homemade stuffing: Bacon, mmmm bacon, fresh rosemary, garlic, onion, sage, white pepper, curry powder, and whatever leftover bread you may have. Chop it all up then mash it up. Pound out the loin chops, fill them, roll them, then bake them. With some potatoes and any other veggies you may want to include with it. Yum!

Fish Eye Lens. An actual new update from this old site. http://homestarrunner.com/fisheyelens.html There is also a new April Fools toon. Nice to see something happening there.

I've tried that one on my wizard too but took it out since it does not work in archon mode which I use half of the time. Naturally this is because archon does not use resource. I like the Wreath of Lighting gem, it kicks out a lot of extra damage so long as you can get plenty of AoE hits on multiple targets. Against a single enemy, it does not proc so often. I really like the new gems not just because they can be upgraded but each one's power can really make you stop and think about how you can best put it to use.

If by the image you gave, the air flow means having the case open, then I am due some royalties.
I used to keep up with how to build a PC yonks ago and I would like to do it again if only to ensure I get precisely what I pay for. However keeping up with the hottest tech hardware in any field is a losing battle. As soon as you acquire the best on the market, the next thing comes out. Unless you work for NSA, CIA, SS, or the international equivalent you will NEVER own a rig that will not be at least partially obsolete in two years.
I still run a mostly pre-set Dell with a few upgrades and the fool thing has been pretty much bullet-proof for all the junk I've given it. So, in the field of ready made rigs, it's not so bad, and you can always adapt them if you have the gumption to do so.
The best upgrade I made to my rig was going to Windows 7 from Vista. However that does not count as an upgrade since getting rid of Vista in any fashion is really a reset to OEM.

I'm moving on towards printing a book and in my consultation with the printer I was told that the next step I really needed to do was figure out what I wanted the cover to be like. So as a package I need not only to deliver my stories but also a face for them as I would like to see it. I have been looking around at some art and found a few things I like and have been thinking of titles too. Tell me what you think pretty please! And if you have suggestions let me know.
The book will be a collection of  new fairy tales in classic style. Main characters of each story can do some kind of magic. Each one has the classic boy meets girl romance and things go wrong subplot.
 Title possibilities: Magic Tales, Wonder Tales, The Old Wizard's Book, Ways of Wonder (meh), Magical Destinies (more like a poetry book IMO), Tales from the Forest's Edge, Tales of Long Ago, From Times of Mist and Magic...

And now cover possibilities: They may require some more shopwork.

Just started playing around with the toolset in Shadow run. Pretty simple to use so far as building areas is concerned. Everything is just a big bucket of digital leggos. Here is a quick bit I tossed together in about a hour.

... an empty bottle of something lay on the floor, remnants of the "business arrangement" the night before. Another bottle of something else poised itself at the edge of the desk like a burned out junkie ready to end it all and join its compatriot. Five bullet holes in the wall beside the unmarked dartboard told the story of my career. Business was as good as my aim. Dammit!

Just got Shadowrun Returns on steam for my birthday. Pretty neat so far. The current story is an old fashioned, film noir, detective style. But I am a dwarf who hacks all kinds of computers for a living. The look and gameplay is very much like infinity engine games, especially Fallout with turn based combat and add a dash of x-com for tactical positioning behind cover. I'll give it a starting score of 5 out of 6 bullets form my .38. I'm saving the last one for a "special occasion."