Architecture

I need to get back around to finishing Last Light.

The season pass seems comparatively cheap, and Respawn's commitment to continuously updating and improving its game is very respectable.

It's a mushy, imprecise d-pad that mars an otherwise excellent controller. I'm actually quite tempted to get one of the new controllers, and I'm leaning toward Xbox One.

Regardless of the truth, Kickstarter should be a little more forthcoming when it suspends a project. It should be clearly presented on a project's page. Even if they speak in vague terms ("investigating potential fraud"), it's awful to shut something down with little to no information and then cut off the interaction between the crowd and the project's team. At the very least, they should've informed West Games about the suspension and given a reason for it. Instead, you go to the page and get "This project has been suspended" as a banner with no other information to suss out the details.

No, this is your inference. And it's a valid one, but I will say that my immediate reaction was one of, "wait, is he wearing that Nazi?" And after playing through the scene a second time, I still had that response. The way the scene is constructed, it smash cuts (or Gilligan cuts, if you prefer) from the act of decapitation to the act of being dressed in leather. The juxtaposition of these two scenes is not an accident, even if the intention is murky. If it is implied that he's wearing human skin, that's disgusting on an ethical level. If it's not meant to be implied, then it's a horrible stylistic choice from the story department of Machine Games. Wolfenstein has been dogged in the press due to its tonal inconsistency, and its general sadism makes it hard for me to outright discount the instinctual response this specific scene elicited. Here's the scene in question, skip to 13:30:

Whew, thank god this is a Hip Hop Gamer-produced video and not some takedown of him, as the YT still sort of indicates it might be. His Oculus Rift demo YT from CES this year made me a fan.

I would say it's all but explicitly stated.

I'm going to re-post a guide I wrote for a different forum. I apologize for its length, but it's meant to cover everything you need to get started with modding Skyrim. --- Archie's Guide to Modding Skyrim --- Preface Howdy! This post is intended to help other players enhance the overall visual experience of playing Skyrim on the PC. I'm going to try and write this as plainly as possible so that a person with a modicum of computer literacy and a measure of patience can yield similar results. If you are starting from a Vanilla build of Skyrim (free of mods entirely), I'd suggest you read everything in this post. If you know your way around The Nexus already, feel skip to Section 2 for a list of mods I'm running. Section 3 covers the basics of installing both the ENB applicaption and various presets. Feel free to post any questions you might have regarding any of this and I'll do my best to assist you. Happy travels! BIG OLD AUTHOR'S NOTE As with all user-created mods, please know your game can break. I don't claim to be an authority on this subject, but I can vouch that every mod in this post is compatible with one another. I'd suggest installing one mod at a time and loading the game in-between each installation; this helps vet each new mod's stability and also lets you gauge system performance. Each additional mod will cause extra strain on both your CPU and GPU, so you might have to make a few concessions here and there depending on your preferences and hardward constraints--for instance, I'm not running SSAO because the frame-rate decrease outweighs the meager bump in visual fidelity. The ENB app alone accounts for a 5-15 frame-per-second decrease in dense outdoor areas on my rig, so your mileage will vary entirely based on the amount of horsepower you've got. You can enable and disable ENB settings on the fly, however, which means you can easily crank up the effects while capturing screenshots and then dial them back down when you're finished. (I sometimes enable depth of field for screenshots, but play the game with it disabled.) Here are my PC's specs, for reference: -Core i5 4670k @ 4.4GHz -Asus Z-97A Motherboard -Gigabyte GTX 760 2GB -8GB DDR3 RAM @ 1866MHz 1. Getting Started with Nexus Mods First off, go ahead and double-check that Skyrim's up-to-date. Then download all the unofficial bug-fix patches (Steam should prompt you to do all of this anyway). Game's working? Good, let's continue. All of the files required, excepting the ENB application itself, can be found at the Skyrim Nexus. You'll want to create an account and make sure to download their Mod Manager. The Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) is an application which streamlines the process of adding and subtracting new content. The first time you run the NMM, have it scan the drive where you keep Skyrim installed (it should auto-detect the game). Next, you'll want to install your chosen mods, either by downloading them via the NMM client, or queueing them up in your browser window. The download links are available via a mod's individual Nexus page by clicking the "FILES" tab on the navigation bar just beneath the page header. The "FILES" page will prompt you to either download via the NMM or download manually. Mods downloaded via the NMM should automatically add themselves to your mods list on the "Mods" tab. The puzzle piece icon with the green plus symbol in NMM will let you load a mod file from an external download (the icon is on the left side of the NMM window). To activate an inactive mod (signified with a red X next to its name), simply double-click its name on the list. A dialog box should confirm its activation and the red X should become a green check mark. Some mods will prompt to you to confirm certain preferences (water color, for instance) during activation. To deactivate a mod, simply double-click it again. Another dialog box should confirm its inactive status. 2. List of Installed Mods This is a list of my installed mods currently managed by the NMM. Please view each mod's readme.txt for help with load order-sequencing. I've listed them in descending order of personal preference. Skyrim HD 2K Textures -Fan-made textures for basically the entire game. If you can only get one mod up and running, I suggest you make it this one. Does a good job of preserving the original art. Climates of Tamriel -New sky boxes. More weather patterns. amazing lightning storms. enhanced weather audio effects. Lots of new volumetric effects, like mists over lakes and inside caverns. Really adds a sense of presence to the game, highly recommended. Note that it will ask if you want dark nights--if you plan to use the ENB application, I would suggest installing the "Vanilla nights" options instead, as the ENB presets will make your screen unplayably dark. W.A.T.E.R Water and Terrain Enhancement -Vastly improved meshes and textures for every water source in the game. Adds a fine mist hovering over waterfalls, which looks gorgeous. Even goes so far as to animate the various water troughs of Skyrim. Has a few different settings, including options on how much chop water produces. Ultimate HD Fire Effects Kind of says it all, really. Vastly improved fire textures for every fire source in the game. Especially noticeable with destruction spells and torches. Tweaked specifically to blow your mind with Boris's ENB. Enhanced Lights and FX -Adds lights to sources that should have them anyway (candles, torches, fires, etc.) and removes lights lacking a source. This mod will darken your game, but goes a long way to fixing some immersion issues I personally had with Skyrim's interiors. Lush Trees and Grass -Adds more foliage to your game. I currently only have the grass mod installed. [/url] -Helps increase the utility of torches as well as the spells candlelight & magelight. Will not impact the game without the ENB application installed and running. I definitely recommend this, as most ENB presets are liable to shroud your monitor in darkness. 3. Installing the ENB Application and an ENB Preset The ENB Series graphic mod overhauls Skyrim's lighting engine to dramatic effect, but at great cost--the mod can prompt a 25% decrease in the number of frames per second on my machine. Luckily, the application has a menu overlay that is accessible from the game at any point by pressing SHIFT+ENTER. You can tweak literally every variable of the ENB mod from this overlay, including disabling the mod entirely. I do recommend toggling the console to freeze the game while making changes to your ENB settings as the overlay does not prevent player input from manifesting in-game, however. Firstly, you'll want to download the latest ENB archive, which is v0.254 as of this writing. Next, you'll want to decide on an ENB preset that appeals to you, and download the appropriate archive. For reference, I'm using the final release of The Wilds ENB preset with some extra effects borrowed from the SugarSweet ENB preset. Next, you'll want to find the folder which contains the actual Skyrim application. It's probably going to be under Steam/SteamApps/common/Skyrim and should contain both SkyrimLauncher.exe and TESV.exe--this is the folder where you'll be copying files. The required files vary by preset, so be sure to read the instructions provided. Here are the instructions for my particular setup -Locate the main Skyrim folder containg SkyrimLauncher.exe & TESV.exe -Download ENB Series v0.254 -Open up the ENB Series archive and copy d3d9.dll to the main Skyrim folder -Download The Wilds ENB preset -Open up the archive and navigate to the following file path: The Wilds ENB - Collection/All-In-One/Version 3.0 - 121212 binary/The Wilds ENB 3.0 LIGHT INTERIORS/Climates of Tamriel -Copy all of the files into your main Skyrim folder -Download the SugarSweet ENB preset -Open up the archive and navigate to the following file path: SugarSweet ENB - REVAMPED - 4.1/00 -- Core -- Install this first -Copy the following files into your main Skyrim folder: enblens.fx enblensmask.png enbsunsprite.fx enbsunsprite.tga -Locate your SkyrimPrefs.ini file (most likely saved under Documents/My Games/Skyrim) and make the following edits: iBlurDeferredShadowMask=6 bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 bShadowsOnGrass=1 -Open up SkyrimLauncher.exe and disable all anti-aliasing, set shadows to medium quality and turn off anisotropic filtering -Launch Skyrim --- And that should do it! Hopefully this was coherent enough to follow. I would suggest just browsing the different categories of the Nexus Mods page and see if any of it appeals to you. You'll find that many ENB presets recommend specific mods for the ideal result, so give those a shot if you're so inclined. Talos Guide You, -Archie

Let me know if you need any assistance getting it all up and running. It's a simple affair (mostly just copying files directly to your main Skyrim folder or using a mod-managing program to automate the process), but a lot of that information isn't particularly well conveyed to the end user (especially installation of the ENB Series app and the various ENB presets). I'm actually using a blend of ENB preset assets to achieve that look (primarily The Wilds ENB with some choice lighting effects grabbed from SugarSweet ENB).

As far as I know, it's only available via an ENB preset, and not all of them contain flares or other lens effects. I have taken effects which appeared in the SugarSweet ENB preset and installed them along with the final update of The Wilds preset. So it looks like The Wilds with some extra effects on top. Another dump of photos:

I'm about a third of the way through a second playthrough (maybe less, actually)--trying my hand at the other timeline on Hard instead of Normal difficulty. This is a good B+ shooter, though some of the sadism of the violence turns me off. I think I mentioned this in the BF: Hardline thread, but the fact that Blaskowicz spins most of the game wearing another person's skin really, really bothers me.

Yeah Boris's ENB application and the various presets from the community blow my mind. I think I've finally settled in on the game's visual aesthetic, at least until I get bored. This is the last release of the The Wilds ENB preset with the sunsprite, lens and some other lighting effects taken from SugarSweetENB which looked nice but had a bad tendency to hide the night sky as if it was Los Angeles. These have been altered in so much as I did some minor adjustments to the levels in Photoshop but nothing else. I re-rolled my character. He's a middle-aged Breton named Timondy Shimelczam. I've never gone pure magic before in one of these games and now I'm feeling rather silly at fearing atronachs as the right magic goes a long way: Timondy at sunrise on the Throat of the World Sunset at Falkreath Somewhere northeast of Solitude The mounatin in morning light Winterhold dusk Snowy mist Be wary the Eye of Magnus Azura bathed in light

I finally took some time to sit down and play through this. I'm tempted to say it's the best-written game I've ever played. I really, really, really liked this. Please take the time to play through it if you haven't already done so: http://ncase.itch.io/coming-out-simulator-2014

I actually find this to be a really interesting, valid criticism. Certainly some of the writing comes off a bit cloying and meme-driven, but I think the believability of both the characters and situations is something that is rarely--if ever--pulled off in video games. It's also staged as a series of SMS messages (which ties into the themes of the game and Nicky's personal history), which are usually colloquial in nature. I can tell you that even though most eloquent people are capable of annoying shorthand when texting. To be clear, I didn't find the writing funny but I did find it authentic. And that in and of itself should be praised, I think.

So I am going to cop to not having read this thread (or even finished listening to the latest episode), but Jake & Chris' suggested Wire article has already been published, albeit over at the Daily Dot: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/dash-con-controversy-tumblr/ It's a fascinating read and does a good job of curating the most relevant Tumblr and Twitter posts to make sense of the madness.

Perhaps I should spoiler that.

It was the receptionist's birthday today, and some of the gals got her a matching birthday tiara and sash. She left for the day, and so now this is her desktop:

And it's unfortunate that they were the least fun of the lowest-level fetch quests. Chasing down a chart only to miss a jump because of AC's frustratingly imprecise traversal mechanics is just plain bad design.

Ben Kuchera spends a lot of time and energy throwing around words concerning problems that don't require solutions.

Oh my god, this explains everything. That book is just mind-numbingly awful--I think I gave it about 40 pages until I finally conceded defeat.

It's where I store my bike, usually in the basement.

You could get Justin Ishmael to make you that shirt, probably. Well, one of his goons. Justin is one of the guys in charge of running Mondo Tees (or Mondo Posters, whatever they call themselves now), and I know Mr. Moss has done lots of work for them previously. Justin shops at the comic store where I used to work, and he was always great to interact with.

I'd venture to guess that San Antonio is significantly cheaper than Houston in all respects, and it probably makes travel and lodging cheaper for the attendees as well. Plus, you know, the Alamo.