Posts by Section_Ei8ht

  • Mass Effect 2

    Quote from skdr

    Just beat it.Amazing game, easily GOTY if something more awesome does not come out.

    Agreed. After finishing it I was stuck in a trance for about 10 minutes; frozen by awesomeness. Easily one of the best games I've ever played (sans scanning mini-game ). Dammit, now we gotta wait another 2 years for the conclusion.

  • Mass Effect 2

    About 18 hours into ME2. Loving it. My only major complaint is scanning. Yeah it was awesome at first but it got really old really fucking fast. I much preferred the original way of doing it where you click a button and done. Sure it was not any form of gameplay or a mini-game, but it felt much more like a commander issuing and order, letting his crew carry out said order, and returning with the results. Why would the captain of the ship manage a tedious thing like planet scanning? I think they should have used the scanning mini-game for finding anomalies on planets (and just have smaller anomalies where not every single one means landing on the planet). It takes way too long to scan and too many probes to deplete the planet (I get like 3 planets max before I have to run back and buy more probes), although this could probably be alleviated by increasing the movement sensitivity of the scanner and having an upgrade for the Normandy that allows it to store more scanners (maybe there is and I haven't found it yet).

    If the choice is either the Mako or the scanning mini-game, I'll take the Mako (but then again, I'm one of those rare folk who actually enjoyed the Mako gameplay from ME1). Sure the terrains were boring terragen and the controls were ass, but at least with the Mako it felt like you were out doing something.

  • Apple tablet!?!?!?

    http://www.theonion.com/content/news_br ... s_stays_up

    Quote

    Frantic Steve Jobs Stays Up All Night Designing Apple TabletCUPERTINO, CA—Claiming that he completely forgot about the much-hyped electronic device until the last minute, a frantic Steve Jobs reportedly stayed up all night Tuesday in a desperate effort to design Apple's new tablet computer. "Come on, Steve, just think—think, dammit—you're running out of time," the exhausted CEO said as he glued nine separate iPhones to the back of a plastic cafeteria tray. "Okay, yeah, this will work. This will definitely work. Just need to write 'tablet' on this little strip of masking tape here and I'm golden. Oh, come on, you piece of shit! Just stick already!" Middle-of-the-night sources reported that Jobs then began work on double-spacing his Keynote presentation and increasing the font size to make it appear longer.

  • Apple tablet!?!?!?

    it's basically an over-sized iPod touch. Runs the iPhone OS, no multitasking, no flash, and no handwriting support [... it's a tablet... how does that make sense...].

    I was looking for a replacement tablet, since my slate is starting to show its age. I'll wait for a Microsoft Courier.

  • Mass Effect 2

    I kinda wanna know why there is a four hour difference in unlock time between the two editions on steam:

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/901242/

    http://store.steampowered.com/app/24980

    any of you industry insiders think of a reason for this? I don't really care, since the delux edition unlocks at 4pm for me, which is the same time I leave work so if it's released on time, it's perfect. I just don't see any logic behind it. You'd figure the more expensive version would unlock 4 hours earlier as an incentive for people to pay more for it. :/

  • James Cameron's Avatar

    Saw it Saturday in 3D. Overall: Awesome movie. Sure, the story's not original and blah blah blah, but that doesn't stop it from being a damn good movie. My only complaint would have to be with the 3D. This was the first feature film I've watched in 3D and while it was cool in parts, it still just felt too wonky at times. I understand that modern 3D cinema is still relatively new and they can't do drastic overhauls to theaters and whatnot, but here's me nitpicking about the 3D:

    - The Framing: probably impossible to do 100% correctly, but there's a lot of problems with the framing of shots. The fact that many of the things in 3D are cut off by the edge of the screen drastically pulls you out of the 3D experience. Either more careful considerations need to be taken to the framing of 3D elements to avoid this, or the screen side would have to be increased to help build the illusion of peripheral vision, rather than looking through a window

    - The Focus: it's obvious that the movie was meant for 2D because of depth-of-field inconsistencies. For the most part it was so subtle I didn't notice it, but there was a section where we have a top-down shot and we see a seed floating in the air. The seed is completely in frame, however the seed was completely out of focus. When watching in 3D, this seed should have been in focus (along with the rest of the image), but in 2D it would have not been in focus (as it was). Now obviously this is nit picking and this would mean a 3D print and a 2D print etc etc, but just saying.

    - Element Juttering: I think this is actually an artifact of having the left eye and the right eye seeing two separate images, but certain elements in motion stutter across the screen. My description of how it looks to me would be like if the background was running at 30fps and the object in motion was moving at 24fps. I'm not sure what this issue is or if it's even fixable. Like I said, nitpicking.

    Granted, at least Cameron didn't put in any of those cliched moments that are always so-obviously FOR 3D, but there were just little things about it that makes me think that it will be a better movie if seen in 2D.

    Anyway, nitpicks aside, absolutely stunning movie. Definitely going to see it again and get a bluray when it comes out. My recommendation: If you want to see Avatar for the experience, see it in 3D. If you want to see Avatar to WATCH Avatar, see it in 2D.

  • Shattered Horizon

    Quote from Nineaxis

    I'm frankly unimpressed, it's neat and all, but I just don't find it fun, which is what I want out of a game. Graphics? Cool. Environment? Cool. Zero gravity combat? Interesting. Fun? No.

    This. I don't even think it looks all that great. I know space is kinda bland, but still...

  • Christmas trees

    Quote from Thrik

    I'd imagine the majority of people celebrating Christmas don't really follow Christianity at all... I mean seriously, who thinks about the whole Jesus birth thing?

    Well, I do... but that's probably because I'm a Christian.

  • Finding energy to work

    For me it's all about getting into the zone; where time pretty much has no meaning and my entire world just becomes me and whatever I'm working on. All of my best work has been done while in the zone, but lately it's been difficult to get into that mindset. When I'm in a position where I'm about to work on something I'm passionate about, I have at least four hours of uninterruptable time, and a steady supply of snacks/drinks, I crack open a Red Bull (seriously, I think I've conditioned myself to the point where the act of cracking open a Red Bull triggers me into alright-it's-time-to-get-shit-done mode), and go to town. [i think I developed this work method during college when I was pulling 4-10 hour all-night coding marathons... damn I miss those]

    If I'm in a situation where I don't know what's going to happen in the next 30 minutes, or how much uniterruptable time I have, or I'm not motivated to work on whatever I have to work on (like my current job ever since my job of programmer was altered to include both general PC help desk support and sysadmining), I have to do what Frie suggested and break it down into smaller tasks and start working on a small part of a project that can be done in 15 minutes and let the work snowball from there.

    I think I'm weird in the fact that I can't get into the zone if I know I'm going to be interrupted within the next hour, because when I'm in the zone and get train-wrecked out, it's tough to get back in unless I do the smaller-part-snowball method. Seriously, when I get train-wrecked out of the zone, it's physically exhausting for me.

  • I need help picking a guitar.

    Quote from JohnC

    Oh shit yes. I swear to god I'd buy ten guitars from the first company with the common sense to have "six string" and "twelve string" as seperate categories on their site.

    http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/guitars/acoustic/

    Cash or check?

    Quote from Psy

    Heh. That's the same guitar I've got at the moment except it's the 6-string RG321MH.

    Nice! I've got an Ibanez 6 string with a floating trem (the S320) and it's my favorite guitar. The feel of the entire guitar and the range of sounds I can get out of it make it awesome easily the best guitar I've ever played. The 7 string feels and sounds the same way. If I needed a 7 string, no questions asked.

  • I need help picking a guitar.

    What twiz said. For an acoustic guitar you'll want to head down to the music store and try it out first hand. There's just too much that goes into an acoustic guitar to give it a unique sound that you just can't tell offhand. I personally think my $300 Fender T-Bucket sounds better than my friend's $1200 Taylor.

    Electric guitars are much more open to modability and changing the sound (pickups, differnt pots, pickup configs, positions... wood kinda matters but not really. On an electric you just have to worry about body weight and natural sustain of the wood and the feel of the fretboard) so you don't have to worry too much. With an acoustic, I would never buy one without playing it first. Only reason I bought the T-Bucket online was because I played one at a local music store and it sounded great, but was able to get it cheaper online.