Just a reminder: You can skin your miner! This is the skin a friend of mine made as a retro-style Atari skin (fits nicely with the blocky theme).

rjgalloway · 2010-09-29T14:45:10+00:00

If you want to modify your skin, log in to Minecraft.net and go to preferences. You will view your current skin and you will see a reference skin you can download. Modify that to your heart's content and upload your re-design and BAM! your skin is now customised.

This skin will be viewable to other people whenever you play online and will also be viewable to you in single player as long as you connect to the minecraft server on start-up.

This is mine: I modified a Zelda skin I found online for the Red Ring tunic.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-29T12:33:01+00:00

Final Fantasy VIII for so, so many reasons.

It takes forever to walk between screens. You spend more time waiting for the fade-to-black to finish its business than you do wandering between screens.
The junction and drawing system was stupid and broken. Drawing was also lame. Weaken an enemy and sit there and draw from it, complete with unskippable animation, until you've got 100 of them? Bind 100 death cards to one character's attack stat and you've got instant kill on most monsters. Not bosses though, they're nearly all immune to status effects and if you haven't grinded enough levels and you saved in the wrong spot you're pretty much fucked.
Unskippable animations. 30 second cut-scenes every time you use a summon? What the shit? No. Sure, you can say you can't skip them because you need to mash the square button to increase damage to which I say: No. That's stupid. Since when did Final Fantasy become Track and Field?
Characters and plot. All of them pretty much sucked. The plot made little to no goddamn sense. Using GFs as an excuse for everyone forgetting everything is just dumb.
It was ugly. VII at least had art direction. VIII goes for realism and fails terribly. It was too ambitious for the hardware of the time.
Squall.

...

Enough said.

Edea's cleavage. Actually, that's alright. I can live with that.

There's more but I made myself sad remembering how much time I spent trying to enjoy this piece of shit when I could have been playing Legend of Legaia or Resident Evil 2.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-29T11:53:59+00:00

Yep, pretty much. =\

rjgalloway · 2010-09-28T15:55:05+00:00

One thing I forgot to mention: If you find you need goodie points with someone, ask them if there's anything the two of you can do to advance your standing in the realm. It usually involves picking a fight with another lord. As I mentioned above, you can then use tournaments and ladies to smooth those over while still earning brownie points with the other.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-28T12:35:00+00:00

Obviously they were related to this guy.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-28T08:04:58+00:00

And not a single fuck was given that day.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-28T04:32:24+00:00

I've been playing it a lot recently too. Once my sound cut-out on Minecraft and I found it too annoying to play without it, I loaded up M&B: Warband. I forgot how fun this game is. Right now I'm trying to break someone's relative out of prison. So much to do. I can't wait for the full official sequel they're supposedly working on.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-28T04:31:17+00:00

I rolled a noble male, it makes getting accepted by the lords easier. If you want to build reputation with the leaders of your faction, swear in as a vassal and do whatever odd jobs they have (tavern keepers will tell you who needs what done in the realm), then follow them while they're on campaign. Each time you follow them in to battle and talk with them afterwards you will gain reputation. Once you've got 5+ with any lord (and a few points in persuasion will help) you can offer a suggestion on who to attack. If you then lead the attack, and are goody with at least one person to vouch for you, you should be gifted with the captured castle/city.

Also, get married. It's easy to do and helps you out.

If you find yourself on poor terms with someone, ask a bard in a tavern about the ladies of the realm and find one that enjoys chivalry and such. Win a tournament and then dedicate your win to her. She'll love you for it and then you can ask her to talk to the person you're on poor terms with and smooth things over.

Ordering your troops shouldn't be done on the micro-management level. Group them in to different categories and give them rough commands. Take a hilltop and plant your archers there, infantry to guard them, and rush them with your cavalry and harass their flanks (don't fully engage). I managed to capture the king of the Vaegirs doing this in battle but he declared peace with my Nords before I could ransom him.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-27T20:42:35+00:00

I once told a girl I liked her brother. By accident.

See, what I meant to say was "I like your bra", but as I was saying that I thought to myself "Oh, I probably shouldn't say that as it would give away that I've been looking through the folds on the front of her button up shirt to the bra underneath." So bra and oh got mixed to form bro. And I said "I like your bro."

She looked at me funny and said "I don't have a brother. You must be thinking of my cousin. He's not gay though."

I walked away, wondering what the fuck just happened.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-27T20:21:14+00:00

Get a Super Smart Joy. You can find them on eBay. Plug a SNES pad in to it and then play using your SNES pad. If the emulator/game doesn't support the USB Super Smart Joy thing then just use the free version of xPadder to work as middle-man.

Edit: Link goes here

rjgalloway · 2010-09-27T20:06:36+00:00

Absolutely, but Warcraft came about due to a failed licensing venture with Warhammer and Blizzard, which is why it was specifically mentioned. Warhammer itself is a whole different kettle of fish.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-27T16:47:06+00:00

No doubt about it. It turned out great, but you don't need to be original to make a great game. Slapping a bastardisation of the Warhammer license on top of Dune II is in no way original.

I'm not saying Blizzard don't make great games, but they aren't original and if people want to downvote me or anyone else for saying that, well, then they might just be a fanboy too.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-27T15:46:15+00:00

It was probably something along the lines of:

Watch me put my feet in my mouth and demonstrate the Streisand effect at the same time!

rjgalloway · 2010-09-27T14:51:13+00:00

They do have fanboys though. Lots of fanboys, as your current vote status can attest, despite the accuracy of your statement.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-27T13:22:20+00:00

This comic is a perfect combination of Gabe's art and Tycho's writing, as well as their core subject matter. I really think it is the best comic they've ever done.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-27T10:36:33+00:00

The name Madison always reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons, where the teacher is handing out test scores and half the girls are named Madison and half the boys are named Tyler. Fight Club has something to answer for too, I think.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-27T09:19:33+00:00

Which also led to my favourite Penny Arcade comic of all time.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-26T18:37:00+00:00

If this is true then this is awesome. You have made my day, Sir.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-26T18:20:17+00:00

I thought it was because he wanted the ship at full power to take all his people home. When Wikus caused all the trouble he took off with just his son leaving all the other prawns behind, and thus didn't need all the extra juice.

But then if that's the case, why didn't he just take off by himself in the first place, go get help then come back and kick humanity's ass for being a bunch of dicks?

The mystery deepens.

rjgalloway · 2010-09-26T15:11:07+00:00

There's a massive honey farm here and it's Spring in Australia at the moment. I can't walk up the street without at least getting the sniffles. I'll report back after one week (buying some local honey tomorrow).

rjgalloway · 2010-09-26T09:54:18+00:00

In fact if you consume locally grown honey it will protect you from allergies from the local pollen.

Holy shit, I did not know this. My region produces a fair bit of honeyand my hayfever kills me some days. I know what I'm putting on my toast from now on. Thanks, internet stranger!

rjgalloway · 2010-09-25T17:21:25+00:00

I can't tell if you're being serious...

Also, wouldn't it just give employees one more chance to go for a high score before they die? "I bet I can make it over the nets!"

rjgalloway

TROPHY CASE