C3PX

TV's Frink said:

Jesus, way to throw gasoline on a fire that had pretty much burned out.  Did you bother to read the rest of the thread?  We already made up. 

Hell, even ABC and I are getting along.  Did I kick your dog recently or something?

I think you are taking things too personally.

I explained my feelings on the situation quite clearly. I know you and sky "made up". That is fine, I don't care, I am not part of that. I was simply saying that attitude of, "Yeah, I know he is talking about me, but I could care less", annoyed me.

I am not trying to throw fuel on any fires, I just hate to see that attitude become the norm. I don't think we should have free reign to crash other peoples threads, just because it amuses us and we think their thread is boring to start with. I am not trying to pick any fights, I think I said my piece quite calmly and peacefully. Skyjedi isn't a troll, he is a long time member here, I respect his views, and don't like seeing him put down.

skyjedi2005 said:

Does anyone have an opinion on what Video Games currently have the best presentation in terms of plot, story, music and sound design.  Has Blu Ray and HD made the audio of world creation more immersive.

I have seen, played few games on XBox 360 and the PS3 so i wondered what everyone's opinion was in terms of currently released games no more than older than this game gen.

I was actually just thinking about this today while playing my new BS2 DLC. The reality is, Bioshock 2 doesn't really look much better than Bioshock 1. Bioshock 1 came out in 2007, Bioshock 2 came out in 2010.

We have reached a point where we are really confined by hardware. PS3 has the capabilities to look really impressive, but unfortunately, so many games are multi-platform. So a PS3 game can only really look as good as its 360 counterpart. It also feels like there are less exclusives coming out these days, but I could be wrong there. Just feels like just about every game I am interested in come out on PS3, 360, and PC.

The 360 was released Nov. 2005, nearly five years ago. The PS3 was released one year later, Nov. 2006. From what I have heard, neither Sony nor Microsoft has any interest in starting the next gen at the moment (could be wrong, I don't really keep up on this stuff that much. But from the news I have heard from E3, it sounds like both companies are putting their resources into breathing new life into their preexisting consoles via motion detection add ons and 3D). So, essentially, we are playing our games on five year old technology, which is pretty ancient.

But yeah, even right now, playing Bioshock 2 in HD on a 50 inch screen with surround sound, I feel extremely immersed. It is amazing to be able to a voice come from behind you, flip around, and see an enemy standing there. Playing Call of Duty 4 on that same setup has much the same effect. So yeah, I'd say modern technology, like HD, has definitely made them more immersive if that is what you mean. Blu-ray has nothing to do with it, since 360 is just a regular DVD drive.

Does any of this answer your question? Not sure if I 100% got what you were going for. Did you want specific titles that seemed exceptionally immersive and with good story telling? Or were you simply wanting to discuss whether or not modern technology has improved the gaming experience?

Darth Solo said:

A B C said:

The title "Banned Members" + DS's royal guard avatar on the top of the pile in the Off-Topic section has something quite impressive.

 Cum again.

^Cum again (duplexed)

Sorry buddy, I just don't know you well enough to be going for multiples.

A B C said:

C3WinXP said:

... DV voice being about the worse of it all, like I said, making it feel like something belonging on youtube and not in my DVD player.

 

That's rather positive actually. That means professional stuff is not something meant to be found for free at each street's corner. Some guys still need their work (in this area) to make a living.

You're maybe too used to the easyness of clicking your mouse and see the whole good stuff follow (with a little exageration... So few). ;)

I think, but am not sure, that I know where you are trying to go with that. But my point was that it feels like something thrown together by a thirteen year old in windows media player and tossed up on youtube. It feel shoddily done. Not good at all. Painful on the ears. Etc. I think TMBTM could have done better with that bit (yes, I have seen some of his other work). IMHO (which doesn't matter,  his edit) when it turn out that badly, he would have been good to try something else. And interesting idea that came to my mind when watching his edit would have been to use the DV voice from the radio drama, just to make it different.

I was not trying to say that youtube is not a ligitmate means of releasing quality original material. I think some pretty impressive stuff comes from non-professionals on the internet. But youtube is also the place where any idiot with a webcam or windows media player can suddenly find themselves video blogging mundanity or throwing together poorly done music videos or gag clips. In fact, I am pretty sure I have seen many of those JEJ lines dubbed over DV before in much the same manner TMBTM did for his edit, which makes it even less original and more of a poor idea. Again, IMHO.

TV's Frink said:

Yes, of course he's talking about me.  To which I say...

...VanDerBeek.

That attitude is really annoying, actually.

I have a long history of defending Sky, so I see no reason to stop now. I actually used to really enjoy his long rant posts, unfortunately, I haven't seen one of those for a long time. Now they are usually just paragraph long rants, and not half as much fun as his ongoing rants.

You justify giving Skyjedi a hard time and derailing his thread he because of his repetitiveness. What about all your threads which are essentially the same thing over and over and over? 

Just sayin', seems to me he has as much right to his complaint threads as any of the rest of us have to our type threads. Chainsawash kept it on topic and productively told Sky that his complaints were invalid while giving plenty of reason why. If no one cared to read his threads, then they could just sink. No need to be a jerk just for kicks and laughs.

I don't, which actually makes me more reluctant to spent my money on anything related to games. Currently I am visiting a friend who has a 360, which gave me the chance to beat BS2 and would give me the chance to play through the DLC, if I am quick about it. 

@Xhonzi and anyone else who has played Bioshock 2.

I was on Live yesterday and noticed a new BS2 DLC and couldn't have cared less. All that has been released so far are multiplayer DLCs, and I have really disliked the BS2 multiplayer from the start. But then out of the corner of my eye I caught the words, "New Story Driven DLC". Whoa! So it wasn't multiplayer DLC! Maybe someone finally got the point!

Decided to look up some reviews for Minerva's Den, and so far it sounds like it is extremely long and well done. It includes a new type of Big Daddy, and at least one new weapon, and supposedly its story is very in depth and outdoes the story to BS2. IGN's reviewer claims that it is better than the original game and takes around 4 - 6 hours to beat. At that, I am sold. Before the day is over they will have my ten bucks and I'll be playing it.

That really sucks, Microsoft must hate the merry little land of OZ.

I suppose membership codes are not cross-compatible? You could nab a $30 dollar code from the states and use it there, could you?

ChainsawAsh said:

There are only two that I've seen so far that I feel are truly "seamless" in the way you describe:

Terminator 3: The Coming Storm by Uncanny Antman
A.I.: Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by JasonN (this one isn't 100% seamless, but it's close, and it dramatically improves the film; the ending is slightly jarring, but it's much, much better than the theatrical version's ending)

See, there you go. You described these two edits as seamless, which got me excited for a moment (The Super-Toys Last All Summer Long one, not the T3 one, no amount of editing would get me to watch that dog of a movie again), but then you mentioned how the ending was jarring. I always here these fantastic reviews for fan edits, and they never live up to the height, and are usually quite of lot worse than anyone at FE would ever care to admit (I get that they deal with edits a lot, so probably have to lower their standards a good deal, and are used to that lack of seamlessness).

Maybe I will check out that A.I. edit, but I have little doubt it will continue to confirm the way I feel about edits, just as War of the Stars did.

Bingowings said:

The rough and ready quality of War Of The Stars is one of the things I liked about it.

I wasn't talking about the "rough and ready" quality, I rather liked that myself. I was talking about those things that don't click, which are pretty heavy in number. Some things were very forced, and absolutely didn't work, but yet let to remain anyway. DV voice being about the worse of it all, like I said, making it feel like something belonging on youtube and not in my DVD player.

Hard to believe this is the place we were talking about fanedits at.

Since Fink mentioned TMBTM's War of the Stars edit, I decided to look into it and thought it looked really awesome! So I decided to download it. Got really good reviews, and many people talked about how great it was. I was actually really excited about it, and had already made up my mind to like it before I even saw it. Finally I got my hands on it and sat down to watch it... and was quickly reminded of why I don't mess with fan edits anymore in the first place.

R2's subtitles tend to come off as slapstick, trying too hard, and entirely non-humorous. They don't have an old exploitation film feel about them at all. And Darth Vader's dub was really jarring. Initially I loved his use of other JEJ dialogue, but he obviously ran into the issue of not having enough of it to go around. The switching between various audio qualities of his voice, and between clips of different characters JEJ played made it feel like something you'd see on youtube. Leaving it alone or getting someone to completely redo the voice altogether might have been a better option, as it is, it makes it entirely unwatchable to me.

I also thought the usage of scenes from Troops was an unbelievably bad idea. It really sticks out and just doesn't blend.

He had a lot of really great ideas going into this one, and did a lot of things that really worked well, but I personally feel he sunk it by taking some really bad ideas way too far, despite the fact that they didn't work at all.

I guess when it comes to fan edits, I have really high standards. If it doesn't look good enough to be able to fool someone who has never seen the film before into believing it could have been the studio release of the film, then it isn't up to my standards. Which is why I have never bothered to release any of my own edits.

doubleofive said:

 

TV's Frink said:

Wait, I thought he was talking about off-topic creativity (adywan comment notwithstanding).

*confused*

I was thinking it was more pre-Rift, post-Rift.

 

This conversation has kind of gone all over the road now. I was just asking Bingo to clarify some things, and he did. Now I fully understand what he was saying. But humorously, it seems we have managed to get everyone else confused in all of this.

To see if I can make things more clear. Bingo seemed to say that this place used to be very "Prickly" whereas now it is much better. That stood in contrast to my view, which was that the glory days of this place are long in the past, despite the minor prickliness (such as trolls and The Rift) that we had in those days, things were still a lot of fun back then. Even though we have gotten a lot more lively lately, things are just not what they use to be.

The "creativity" bit came from this.

Bingowings said:

I was only really prompted to join up after ANH:R because I saw the potential of throwing ideas in there and the place became creative and vibrant, not just a single issue protest site with a discussion board glued on. There were so many different possibilities.

I am not Bingo, so I cannot speak for him. But I am pretty sure he was talking about the ANH:R thread and the ideas being thrown around in it. This also stood in contrast to my feelings about this place. It felt like we used to have a good number of projects pouring out of this place all the time. I see Adywan's work as kind of the last great things to come out of this place. In other words, I feel that while there is still a good deal of creativity going on in his threads, everything else has gone rather stale in the creativity department, and most other projects are rehashes of things that have already been done to some extent or another at least twice before.

I was never commenting on creativity in the Off-Topic thread, nor complaining about a lack thereof.

I actually don't even watch a lot of movies. Maybe one or two a month. Usually those are with friends. If there is a film I am really interested in seeing, I would probably rent it and watch it on my computer or go see it in the theater. That way I don't have to put up with the censorship of broadcast television or the cost of cable, or the commercials in both.

Warbler said:

C3PX said:

Gaffer Tape said:

(I haven't had TV in a year)?

Awesome! I haven't had TV in ten years. (Cheated a little in order to watch Lost and Galactica the last few years, but now that they are both over, I am 100% TV free).

Why no TV?   surely there must be something on that you like.    There's all different kinds channels.

TV's Frink said:

Too many pictures.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

:p

Well, actually... yeah.

I just find it to be a horrible waste of time. Sure, there are some things on I might like, I love documentaries for one, but I never have nor ever would consider spending money on cable. I'd rather waste my time reading books, or going out. When I first got out on my own, I bought an aquarium and placed it on a TV stand in my living room right where most people would have put their TV. Personally, I feel that staring at that aquarium was far more beneficial to me than anything the silly glowing box of colors could have provided.

Up until a month ago I did own a TV, but never had anything but my 360 hooked up to it. Now I am once again TV-less, and my poor 360 lives in my trunk.

So yeah, long story short. I think TV = MASSIVE waste of time. If I need commercial filled news and entertainment, I have the radio (mostly NPR). I might barrow TV show DVDs from a friend from time to time and watch them on my laptop. And every time a new episode of South Park is out I go to their website and watch it. Even without a TV and just those few things I mentioned above, I still feel that my life is far too full of time wasting electronic entertainment.

People talk about TV being a way of unwinding and relaxing. Well, my most fulfilling and relaxing days have begun at 4 - 5 am sitting at the lake fishing. Around 6:30 I would head home, bath, throw whatever I caught on ice, and get to work by 8:00. When I got home from work, I'd clean my catch, throw it on a grill, cook it, and eat it (if I hadn't caught anything, I ate cereal). Then I'd spend the evening reading, go to bed around 21:00, wake up, and start it all over again. There was no TV, and very little computer usage involved.

TV's Frink said:

 Whoa! And to think inside that little astro droid lives a tiny little man.

Warbler said:

C3PX said:

The whole exodus was pretty lame, but we had good times before that, and once the drama was over and the departing members finally got tired of shoving their departure in everyone's faces,

careful there, lets not be reopening old wounds.

Quite right, Warb. Sorry about that. Yes, it is important that this thread does not lose sight of the issue at hand. The issue... of Televisions Fink! ;)

Bingowings said:

I didn't say the forums were pure chaos before I arrived (not only would that suggest they were never fun back then but it also implies I personally had some talismanic influence over everything...clearly not the case).

The bolded bit is an extremely curious statement to me. Care to explain it further?

If it means what I think you mean it to mean and what the words would have it mean (which is usually not the case with you) you are suggesting that I was suggesting that you're arrival de-chaosed the place? Obviously that is not what I intended to imply I thought you meant. I simply meant that you thought it seemed to calm down for other reasons (large quantities of creativity perhaps, as your post seemed to imply, which I can't get behind because I think we were far more creative before and not so much now (with the exception of Adywan).

I don't know why you think they were so "prickly" before. You seem to think this place was pure chaos before you arrived here. There was an occasional troll, and then there was The Rift. You said you didn't join until after you saw SW:R. Personally, I feel still feel that this place was in its height right before and after the The Rift. The whole exodus was pretty lame, but we had good times before that, and once the drama was over and the departing members finally got tired of shoving their departure in everyone's faces, there were even more good times to be had (most of the best times, actually).

A B C said:

Bingowings said:

... I was made to feel as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit...

Does it lead to technical issues ?

That may be more welcome in a bathing suit though.

 

PS: Ah... Ok:

What would happen if you farted in a space suit?

That site is spreading false information!

Open a flap in your suit to let the fart out, and your blood would boil, your skin and internal organs would swell up, and – finally – you’d freeze.

That is not true.

ferris209 said:

http://www.yourdictionary.com/cripe

Hmm, doesn't sound like the thing I want for breakfast this morning after all...

Might just have to stop somewhere for eggs, sausage, and spam.

What is a cripe? Can it be eaten for breakfast, and if so, where do I get one?

1) How can you read about Dr. Tesla's Earthquake causing machine and not become immensely excited? Every time I read about the man's inventions and the possibilities of what could have been, I nearly soil my pants. 

2) The thread is currently about historical figures, the title will eventually reflect that.

I was going to make a thread called "Rarely Talked About But Entirely Awesome Historical Figures", but decided to call it "The Most Excitingest Thread Ever" in your honor and to attempt to turn today's seriousness into a bit of levity. I also thought it would be amusing to put the eventual thread title in the thread title, as a play on the common practice of putting the previous thread titles in the thread title of threads that undergo a title change.

There is really nothing about him that isn't extremely disturbing. He was obviously extremely intelligent, and had a good way with people as he was very persuasive.

Even more disturbing is how much he would profit from his habits, from collecting life insurance policies, to selling skeletons and body parts to science and medicine. 

PlayOn sounds cool but...

http://www.playon.tv/blog/word-playon-mac

Dr. Henry Howard Holmes - Serial Killer

Killed an unknown number of people, potentially (but unlikely) ranging in the hundreds. Built a kick ass "Murder Castle", complete with its own crematorium. Probably never would have been caught if he hadn't gotten sloppy on some life insurance scams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes