Jump to content
Banner by ~ Ice Princess Silky

Twilight Dirac

User
  • Posts

    881
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Twilight Dirac

  1. How does one go about joining this club? I attempted to join the club through the "Clubs" tab but I have been stuck in "pending" for over a month now. Thanks for the assistance.
  2. How about Virtua On? It is probably my favorite arcade game, but I haven't encountered a Virtua On arcade machine in over a decade.
  3. It's fine as long as you drink it in moderation. And bartenders can do amazing things with cocktails. I am drinking a whiskey sour as I write this.
  4. I really couldn't say, as just about every game I was playing extensively last year was released at least one year prior. The Tau Empire DLC is what got me into Warhammer Gladius, which is a fantastic game. The Star Kings expansion got me back into Age of Wonders: Planetfall, which is another stellar game. So unless you want to include expansions as GOTY I have nothing to nominate. Maybe Borderlands 3 as an honorary GOTY, on the grounds that anything that is an Epic Games Store exclusive shouldn't even count as a release until it's released on a proper digital storefront. That would be a cool technicality to make it clear to Epic how much gamers think of their exclusivity deals.
  5. Maybe one ought to just trust the tale and not the teller. Racism is an odd accusation to level against the Harry Potter series, since one of the major themes of the series is that racism is a terrible thing. I haven't read anything of Rowling's since The Deathly Hollows so maybe the new books are rabidly pro-racist, but the original seven books make it clear on no uncertain terms how terrible racism is. The central conflict in the book is between Voldemort and his Death Eaters, which are all racial supremacist, and everybody else. Voldy & friends are obsessed with "pure blood" lineage, even though the book series makes is clear there is zero meaningful difference between pure bloods, half-bloods and muggle borns. Despite this, they are willing to commit atrocities up to and including the torture and murder of children to establish a society with pure bloods at the top. Book 2 even has Slytherine and Voldemorte unleashing a giant snake monster in Hogwarts with the express intention of murdering children for no other reason than they were born to the wrong parents. And if the A Plot didn't make the themes obvious enough, there is also the overt racism between the humans of the Wizarding World and the elves, centaurs and goblins, with the wizard's treatment of the elves in particular being beyond horrible. So racism is the largest cause of suffering and death in the Wizarding World by a considerably margin. There is nothing redeeming or sympathetic about Voldemorte, most of his followers or his cause, and Voldemorte himself is revealed to be a hypocrite and a coward along with being a sadistic, mass-murdering psychopath. The book series simply does not screw around with any of these themes and takes a very clear stance against this sort of behavior. So I find it strange that the series itself is accused of spreading bigotry when the whole series is essentially an anti-bigotry diatribe.
  6. Even better question, could this support a game of Warhammer 40k Apocalypse?
  7. Ross Scott of Freeman's Mind and Game Dungeon fame has gone on a crusade against this sort of thing. Game Dungeon in particular covers several games that people who paid for them can no longer play because they were dependent on online servers that were shut down. As an added touch, any game covered in Game Dungeon that is dependent on an online server gets an icon of a man with a noose around his neck giving a thumbs up in the summary at the end of the video. There was a game I liked called March of War that suffered this very fate. It was basically a turn-based tactical diesel punk game, think turn-based Command & Conquer. It had six unique and rather characterful factions, and was a blast to play. Unfortunately, it was run from a server which the developer abandoned when it wasn't making enough money. Its fans circulated a petition to ask for the source code so they could host the game for themselves, but it fell on deaf ears. It was a free to play game, but had a real money store, so anyone who made real money purchases lost everything they purchased in that game. So yes, anything you purchased that is dependent on a remote server you can't control can be taken from you in the blink of an eye. This is why I will not touch the Google Stadia with a 30 ft pole. You are just asking to have your video games purchases ripped away without cause by using that thing.
  8. This looks really good. Does anyone know how this differs from Roll20, or what the price point is, or even what the official name of this particular tabletop simulator is? It certainly looks like it supports 5th Edition D&D rules whatever it is, as the example character sheet for Symra is a 5th edition D&D sheet. If anyone is interested in running this thing for a test, I know how to DM 5th Edition D&D. I won't be free until sometime early next year to actually do it (DMing is a time commitment), but drop me a line if you are interested.
  9. This is a rather disappointing development and in many ways feels like a dark reflection of our times. It seems more and more we are unable to simply talk to each other regarding matters of importance, and I have always believed that talking things out is the best way to resolve our differences. I understand that it's not mlpforums.com responsibility to provide the sole outlet for which the world is able to discuss its problems, but there is now one less place where people can learn to understand each other. A lot of posters seem to open revile this section of the forums, but I have always found a twisted beauty in the debate pit. It was always the most interesting place to be, even if it wasn't the most pleasant. It was the kind of place that I find disturbingly rare despite the free flow of information that the internet provides, a place where people of radically different ideologies and world views can discuss there differences without the whole subforum degenerating into an echo chamber for any single ideology. The debate symposium let you glimpse the world through the eyes of others, and we will be poorer for its absence. I for one will mourn its absence. Something of value has been lost today.
  10. This guy was brilliant on Mythbusters. Shame he had to die so young.
  11. I have seen every Star Trek film save Beyond. The rankings are: 1.) The Wrath of Khan: Pretty much an obligatory first place for any Star Trek fan, and it deserves the number 1 spot. It combines a brilliant character driven plot with the best space battles seen in the series and is an excellent send-off for Spock (he gets better though). Not much else to say here, other than a darn good movie. 2.) The Undiscovered Country: In many ways this is my favorite, despite the superior Wrath of Khan. It is a brilliant thesis on the nature of conflict, hatred and xenophobia wrapped up within a political thriller mystery, and provides excellent world building for the upcoming TNG era of Star Trek. Also, this movie is the perfect rebuttal for anyone who insist that The Motion Picture is the only "true" Star Trek movie. If overcoming your personal demons and fear of the future to make lasting peace with a bitter enemy doesn't count as a proper Star Trek plot, than what the heck does? Also, this movie is the perfect send off for the TOS cast. 3.) First Contact: The only TNG movie that is actually worth watching. It seamlessly combines a tense, action filled A plot with a fun world building B plot with a nice bit of character sketches thrown in for good measure. It is a shame none of the other TNG movies would turn out this good. 4.) The Voyage Home: The one with the whales. It combines a wacky time-travel plot with a somewhat ham-fisted environmental message. It is a fun comedy nevertheless and makes good use of the setting, characters and pretty much anything else it had available to it. 5.) The Motion Picture: One word: padding. This movie is brutally padded beyond all reason. That being said, what plot, character growth and concepts that lie within said padding are actually fairly solid. It is just a shame it waste so much of the audiences time doing absolutely nothing. 6.) The Search for Spock: This movie is a weird one. For every movie listed below this, the flaws are kind of obvious, and the same can be said for The Motion Picture. There aren't any such glaring flaws in this movie, but it still doesn't quite work. I think at least some of it is wasted potential, there are so many momentous events in the movie, including the fact that Spock is raised from the dead, and yet it comes off as downright boring most of the time. I think the major problem is that nothing is properly paid off in this movie, and that it is left to The Voyage Home and the Undiscovered Country to properly wrestle with the consequences of the things that happen in this film. 7.) Star Trek (2009): This movie is just a generic action flick with a Star Trek skin stretched over it. That being said, it is a competently executed action flick with young actors who can perform in the action scenes, as opposed to aging geriatrics trying to fake their way through the action scenes. This is enough to put it well ahead of the remaining three TNG movies, which insist being action flicks despite the fact that action (outside of space ship combat) was never TNG's strength. 8.) Insurrection: Mediocre action flick with a horribly botched aesop. The Federation is tasked with harvesting some planetary rings for some medical miracle that will likely save the lives of billions, but they will have to displace a few hundred aliens known as the Ba'ku from the planet because the harvesting process will kill the Ba'ku otherwise. Picard sides against the Federation because he believes displacing the Ba'ku is wrong. The whole moral dilemma falls flat on its face when we discover that the Ba'ku are a bunch of condescending, selfish assholes who were unwilling to share the planet with their own brethren because their brethren refused to accept the Ba'ku's bullshit Amish lifestyle. This led to the exile of the Ba'ku's brethren as the Son'a, who live in a perpetual state of body horror that requires constant medical treatment to prevent their faces from melting off while the Ba'ku get to live as immortals in a natural paradise. Meanwhile, the Son'a only want to harvest the planet rings to end their body horror condition, and are trying to avoid killing the Ba'ku if possible. Also, technically the planet with the rings doesn't even belong to the Ba'ku. 9.) Nemesis: Weird plot centered around a terribly developed villian that leads to a dull, protracted space battle. The actions of this movie's villian make no sense given the backstory and motivations provided, while the space battle involves four starships shooting at each other to no effect until the movie arbitrarily decides to make a given shot crippling. Shinzon happens to be equipped with weapons, ships and technology that he utterly lacks the capacity to develop and acquire, and the movie never even bothers to try to explain it. Also, Troi gets mind raped for no reason at all, because I guess the movie wasn't scummy enough as is. 10.) Into Darkness: Why is Khan in this movie at all? He was apparently coerced into making advanced Star Fleet technology for a corrupt admiral, but much like Shinzon's technological acquisitions there is no reason why the 22nd century warlord Khan would know the first thing about developing state of the art 23rd century technology. And honestly, Cumberbatch's character could be literally any other genetically augmented human and it wouldn't effect the plot at all. Beyond that, the whole plot is just a succession of the movie pulling things out of its ass. Transwarp beaming across the galaxy, check. Weird long range torpedoes that are both highly destructive explosives and cryostatsis pods for augmented humans, check. A section 13 super starship. In for a penny in for a pound I guess. 11.) Generations: This is just a non-stop train wreck from start to finish. Nothing in the plot makes sense, Picard makes non-stop stupid decisions, Riker loses the Enterprise to a single Bird of Prey, and Data's emotion chip antics are just downright painful. And it finishes with one of the worst character deaths in cinema history. Kirk had the perfect send off in Undiscovered Country, why did this movie bring him back only to bury him under a pile of loose rocks? 12.) Final Frontier: The less that is said about this movie, the better.
  12. The board games through vassal thread got locked.  I think Bas is trying to set something up through either private messages or Discord.  You want in?

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. MasterofChaos

      MasterofChaos

      It won’t let me add you..

    3. Twilight Dirac

      Twilight Dirac

      Strange, what is your Discord username?

       

    4. Twilight Dirac

      Twilight Dirac

      So, have you made any further attempts to contact me on Discord?

  13. That I am. If we can get two more people to join us, we should be set. Hopefully we can sort out the time zone differences.
  14. I hear you there. Getting 3 to 5 other players together for a 6 to 8 hours game of Twilight Imperium is no easy feat. If you can managed to regularly get together to play games virtually though, Tabletop Simulator is probably worth the money.
  15. I'm in. I am always looking for more ways to get into board games. Also, given that this thread ways started 6 years ago, between then and now they released a program on Steam called Tabletop Simulator. Not only does it look much nicer than Vassal, a great many of the board games available on the Steam Workshop have scripted automation for the more tedious aspects of the game such as the initial board setup and the end of turn accounting that tends to crop up in the more complicated board games. If you are playing something like Terraforming Mars or Twilight Imperium, this scripting is an absolute godsend. The downside is that Tabletop Simulator will put you back about $20. Note that you do not have to pay for any of the actual games though.
  16. I am surprised nobody has mentioned The Dragon Prince, given it's an animated fantasy epic. I think at least one of the writers from Avatar: TLA helped develop it and one of the main character uses and same voice actor as Sokka from TLA. It's an excellent series in any case and I highly recommend it.
  17. As others have pointed out, they keep on changing the names of the summoned creatures from one FF title to the next. Given that each FF game (except the hyphenated series) takes place in its own Universe, I really don't see anything wrong with that.
  18. Best games of the decade: 2010: Civilization V 2011: Deus Ex: Human Revolution 2012: X-Com Enemy Unknown, FTL 2013: Stardrive 2015: Cities: Skylines, Kerbal Space Program, Heroes of the Storm, Stardrive 2 2016: Overwatch, X-Com 2, Civilization 6, Stellaris, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Total War: Warhammer 2017: Divinity Original Sin 2, Prey 2018: Warhammer: Vermintide 2 2019: Age of Wonders: Planetfall Overall: Civilization V, honorable mentions for Divinity Original Sin 2 and Overwatch.
  19. One of the great advantages of PC gaming is the near infinite backwards compatibility of the platform. With a PC, you basically have access to the entire catalog of PC games going all the way back to the DOS era, and there are a great many classics that are still worth playing: Deus Ex, Master of Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, Ultima, Baldur's Gate, Civilization, etc. As long as you are not insistent on playing the most recent titles at the highest graphics settings, a budget PC should serve you well.
  20. FYI: You don't get any money for landing on "Free Packing". Stick to that rule and the game will progress faster. Now if you really want to play a game that last all day, might I suggest Twilight Imperium.
  21. That is because in the U.S. progressives are called liberals, hence liberal vs. conservative, while liberals are called libertarians. It does tend to make things rather confusing.
  22. Ok, I need to stick up for Atlanta International Airport. I have always found that place well run and well laid out, especially for its size. The layout is just five or six concourses, all of which are just straight lines, and all of which are all perpendicular to a central underground spin. You can walk between any of the concourses through the spine, which contains an optional tram if you need to cover large distances quickly. Getting anywhere in that airport can be done in three turns. Turn towards the spine, walk to and enter the spine, turn towards the correct concourse, walk or tram to the concourse, upon entering the concourse turn to the one of only two directions your gate lies in walk to the gate. Also, the whole airport lies behind one security checkpoint, once you are behind said checkpoint you can move freely throughout the entire airport without any impediments. That being said, there are two airports that I despise: Orlando-International Airport There are two big problems with this airport. The first is it has got to have one of the worst TSA security checkpoints I have ever encountered. There always seems to be a long, snaking, backed up lines of travelers waiting to have their 4th Amendment Rights violated, and the TSA employees always seemed to be in a foul mood. This is an airport you need to come at least 30 minutes early just to get through security, although I would suggest getting an their an hour early, unless you have TSA pre-check. The other problem is the trams. You know how I said the trams were optional for Atlanta airport, well not here. There are two trams servicing each of four concourses. The thing is, one of the two trams for a given concourse always seems to be out of service. So after waiting in the TSA line, get ready to wait in another because the single tram servicing the concourse is backed up. And I hope you don't have to change concourses, because they recently modified the tram exit in the central terminal to force passengers immediately out of the security checkpoint area, so even if you want to go from one tram to the tram that is literally adjacent to it, you have to go through the security check point again, not to mentioned waiting for not one but two tram rides. Seriously, I don't think I could come up with a worse airport layout if I tried. It isn't like it is that big of an airport either, it is just laid out stupid! Ronald Reagan International Airport Ok, this airport isn't stupidly laid out like Reagan, its problem is simple; it's just too small. This airport has got to be carrying the air traffic of a terminal four times is size. Nothing is sufficient for the number of travelers in this airport, not the waiting area, not the restrooms, and not the eateries. And its concourses are all isolated from each other by security checkpoints, and the areas behind each security checkpoint are tiny and horribly overcrowded. Don't even get me started about the X gates, where you have take buses out to airplanes standing on the runway because, just like everything else, there aren't enough gates for the air traffic. They honestly need to be routing a lot of this air traffic through Baltimore-Washington International instead, as this airport simply isn't equipped to handle the amount of air traffic and passengers it receives. As a bonus, it is located in downtown D.C., so just getting to and from this airport is a problem in and of itself.
  23. I have watched all TNG, DS9 and Voyager and some of TOS and Enterprise. I haven't watched any of Discovery because I refuse to pay for CBS All Access. TNG is easily the best series and contain some absolutely brilliant episodes, while DS9 and TOS would be second and third. For anyone who hasn't watched Star Trek, only DS9 and the third season of Enterprise are serialized, everything else is stand-alone, so you don't need any previously background to enjoy an episode of TNG. In fact, I would recommended skipping the first season of TNG entirely, that season isn't actually that good and you can easily get burned out on it before reaching the good stuff. As far as Star Trek movies go, I have seen all of them except Beyond. Sadly, most Star Trek movies are notoriously bad, although there are a couple of really good ones. Everybody should watch The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country, those two movies are absolutely masterpieces. The other two good ones are The Voyage Home and First Contact. The remaining TOS movies are various unique versions of bad, and for some reason Paramount seemed to have zero confidence in TNG despite its amazing run when bringing TNG to theaters, so every single TNG movie was made into a bizarre action movie where Captain Picard runs around punching people. J.J. Abrams apparently thought that was a good idea, so he remade the TOS universe into a series of movies where Kirk and Spock run around punching people. Overall there just seems to be a lot of mindlessly punching people in the newer incarnations of Star Trek. As for Star Wars, just stick to the original trilogy. It's better that way. TNG also includes such gems a Darmok, Yesterday's Enterprise, Best of Both Worlds, Tapestry and All Good Things. This series just had some absolutely phenomenal episodes. It is such a shame that Paramount decided the best way to capstone all of this was to have Picard run Shinzon through with a spear. Talk about missing the point of the series!
  24. I have many: Ocarina of Time was a relatively weak entry into the Zelda series, being surpassed both by its predecessors; including the original, Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, and its successors; including Majora's Mask, Windwaker, Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild. I don't consider it to be the worst Zelda though, that honor belongs to Spirit Tracks. Final Fantasy 9 was a weak entry into the Final Fantasy series, suffering from tedious combat, lack of character customization options and a plot where the characters do bugger all until the end of the story. It is easily inferior of Final Fantasy 7. Of course we all know that Final Fantasy 6 is the best FF, and that Kefka is that best villain. Civilization 5 is the best entry into the series to date, surpassing both Civilization 4 and Civilization 6. The one-unit-per-tile system implemented for combat was nothing short of brilliant, and global happiness was a solid mechanic for preventing settler span. Paradox grand strategy games are obtuse, bloated and poorly designed. Paradox's best games are actually Cities: Skylines and the newly released Age of Wonders: Planetfall. The 2017 release of Prey is a absolutely phenomenal video game that easily surpasses all of the Bioshocks as a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is easily the best RPG of the past 5 years, if not the past decade, surpassing even the likes of Breath of the Wild. Overwatch is another gaming masterpiece and easily surpasses Team Fortress 2. Heroes of the Storm is superior to both League of Legends and DOTA 2. Super Mario Brothers 3 is still the best Mario game to date, yes even better than Super Mario World. Super Mario 64 is overrated, possessing relatively sparse and empty environments and a repetitive gather the star mechanic. Super Mario Kart 64, on the other hand, still has the best battle mode of any Mario Kart. Not counting the wretched business practices surrounding it (see always online connections and real money auction house), Diablo 3 was a clear improvement over Diablo 2.
  25. I would imagine Hawaii wouldn't experience summer or winter as we understand it, or would experience much milder seasons than normal. Of course Florida is the ultimate state for having no seasons. You have summer and mild summer.
×
×
  • Create New...