Posts by Thrik

  • Breaking Bad

    I got through all of this late last year (or maybe it was this year) and yeah, wow. What a series. It's a weird one though, because it's so mercilessly dark that I don't think I'll ever want to watch it again. Even now, some of the worst moments still haunt me because they're just so unfair on the people who are pulled into Walt's world and ultimately find themselves befallen by terrible fates...

    Quote

    ...obvious examples off the top of my head being that child who Todd kills, both of Jessie's lovers, and Hank.

    Still, as @blackdog and @El Moroes said, it's a magnificent story that charts the moral downfall of a man who started out as very easy to like and sympathise with, and ultimately becomes both a monster and somebody who brings hell to those whose lives he touches — whether directly or indirectly. Truly a lamentable character by the end.

    Now you've got Better Call Saul to watch I guess? It's not (yet) reached anything like Breaking Bad's stature, but it lays the groundwork for something that could become very good.

  • Journey

    Yeah I think they just released it as a simple port, as it seems to be available to me on my PS4 even though I only bought it for the PS3... unless that's because of PS+ or something.

    Anyway, yes this game is wonderful. I hope that with the PS4 release they've rectified any technical limitations there might have been with the resolution and/or frame rate, although I don't remember any problems there anyway.

  • What do you think about the new look?

    You guys might have picked up on this from the announcements at the top of the page, but since getting back from France at the weekend I've been working on the slowness issues. There was a weird issue occurring with the external server that handles things such as anti-spam and chat, which was causing all page loads to slow down as a result. This has been rectified for now and I'm (strongly) encouraging the software vendor to patch it so that such connectivity problems don't result in such slowdown.

    I also installed several general maintenance patches. I couldn't tell you what exactly they fixed or changed, but I do know that a whole bunch of things were in there so it's possible that some stuff previously mentioned in this thread has been resolved. Things such as the typing auto-correct are sure to annoy a lot of people so I expect that if they haven't been fixed already, they will be soon.

    Regarding signatures, during the next week I'll be reactivating them at last as well as implementing some simple tagging so that it's easier to see who is staff and also who is a donator (i.e. store purchases and/or other methods). I'll put more info about this up separately somewhere soon.

    As for achievements, I would like to revisit our old concept from years ago of having particularly well-received community work recognised with a badge and featured in a monthly spotlight, and it'd also be nice to recognise article contributors with one. These in addition to the staff/donator badges would provide a simple but meaningful way of distinguishing people without it becoming elitist as Sprony mentioned.

    I have given the spotlight feature thought on various occasions but I've wanted to get other things working smoothly first. I currently envision it being an article that runs every month, highlighting a few works in the 3D and 2D forums (i.e. maps, models, scenes, concept art). A shortlist would probably be produced from which posts have the most likes, and then staff would choose a few favourites and write a little about each piece, also awarding a badge to the author.

    What I don't want to do is start doling out badges based on longevity, post count, likes, or anything like that. I've implemented exactly that kind of thing on forums before, and it has inevitably led to junk posting and/or resentment because they're not really worth anything when you truly think about it; even when I've accidentally enabled post counts and reputations on MapCore when doing updates, I've had public or private complaints almost immediately. Likes are probably more meaningful than the others, but you can still see those via people's profiles, and I see those as more for allowing you to see which posts are considered high-quality while reading threads rather than as a way of judging people.

    @Vaya Probably not actually, we already have older threads automatically moved into a different database table which is read-only so those threads can no longer be modified. That all works pretty efficiently, and becomes more so as those old threads are accessed as they're also cached.

  • Browser/browsing problems

    One factor that might be at play is whether or not the GPU is being used. It could be that the GPU is being used for rendering the video and it's not very powerful, or it could be that the GPU isn't being used and that's the cause of the slowdown (not all implementations of HTML5 video used the GPU at one point, not sure if it's still the case).

    It's easy to underestimate how demanding rendering a large HD video can be, so this could well be a factor. If you find that it's better in other browsers it may be because Firefox's implementation is a bit shoddy.

  • What's going on with your life?

    Shieeeeet. It's a scary prospect to think how easily anyone can choke at any time, although obviously chewing your stuff better makes it less likely!

    FYI there are videos on YouTube showing how to do the Heinrich manoeuvre on yourself and others. I highly recommend everyone watch these.

  • Batman: Arkham Knight

    All right, you guys have convinced me. I'll play Asylum, City, and Knight. :D I just saw that there might be a remastered collection coming for the PS4, so I'll wait to see if that comes. Got lots of other games to keep me going in the meantime.

  • Dirty Bomb

    Sounds really interesting actually, I was vaguely aware they were doing another team-based game but had forgotten all about it. Shame it's not out on any consoles though, I don't really bother with PC gaming now. There are so not enough team multiplayer games on the PS4, even if I am enjoying PlanetSide 2.

  • Batman: Arkham Knight

    What do you guys think about me getting this without having played any of the previous Arkham games? I don't know if I have the stamina (or time) to get through all three of them, although I guess with #3 being by another studio I could just do the first two games. I guess I'm wondering if this is the kind of series where I'll genuinely have a better experience having gone through those first (like Uncharted), or if I might as well just jump into this (like Assassin's Creed).

  • What's going on with your life?

    Yoga clothing R&D? Sounds like that could be quite excellent.

    Glad you're enjoying your new city. I'm starting to tire of Nottingham and actually the UK in general now, so while I'm OK for the next year or so, I'm definitely starting to get that antsy feeling where I just want to impulsively move somewhere. After a recent holiday in Spain that doesn't seem too bad, but then there are all kinds of places in the EU and beyond I'd happily go. Lots of thought needed around that I think.

  • Puddy's Gun Review (of Freedom)

    I dunno, I guess that from the home page posts give a better indication of how lively a forum is than threads — for example EOT has relatively few threads, but many have literally hundreds of posts.

    Whatever the reasoning was, you can see posts via the home page and threads/topics at the top of an individual forum. I guess you could squeeze both values in each place but it doesn't seem worth it.

  • Puddy's Gun Review (of Freedom)

    I dunno, I guess that from the home page posts give a better indication of how lively a forum is than threads — for example EOT has relatively few threads, but many have literally hundreds of posts.

    Whatever the reasoning was, you can see posts via the home page and threads/topics at the top of an individual forum. I guess you could squeeze both values in each place but it doesn't seem worth it.