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Post by Sniffles on May 8, 2020 21:45:19 GMT
Your right only if the Great Lakes have migrated to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming Guess I zoomed out a bit much. For some reason I was expecting Thailand because I though Sniffles & Squishy lived there? It's a serious commute. Interesting being able to view three entirely different cultures so objectively. When we're in Thailand we save a lot of money. So expensive in the US. So I'm working there, here, and Squishy has a job back home. Looks like we might trade off in a while.
Off the subject, an example of how stupid the fanatic anti immigration BS is: (Rant) A while back Squishy was going through San Francisco airport on a domestic flight. For reasons known only to the one eyebrow crowd working INS she got shuffled into an immigration checkpoint. Being an obvious illegal immigrant going by the infallible test of the color of a persons skin they demanded she show proof of what country she was a citizen of. The only ID she had on her did not have a photo.(1) So they locked her up in a holding cell. She was stuck there, completely ignored, for over 4 hours. Finally she was allowed to make a phone call. But the phone they allowed her to use would only allow local calls.(2) Attempting to explain things almost got her locked back up. She then had a bright idea. She called the local police department, asked for a supervisor and got shuffled around a bit. She finally got someone with a half functional brain and explained her situation and asked the person to call her work number, collect, and relay her predicament. Then she got stuck back in her cell to wait for another half hour. Brought back out she was handed a phone. Her boss on the line. She ran the situation down to him. He asked to speak to the INS moron(s). They talked for a long time. She was later told her boss wanted to send them a fax of her ID but he needed a secure phone number. They were only allowing use of the public phone.(3) He asked them to call him which they finally did. But they, the INS, could not give proof they were who they said they were. Her ID being confidential. Her boss called the head of airport security and was given the run around. He finally contacted San Fran Police, explained to them then faxed her ID. SF PD called the local PD and finally the local PD sent a car to the airport who finally verified she was a US citizen.(4)
Wait for it...... (1) The ID she had on her was an official government document. Her Bureau of Indian Affairs ID. There is no single standard as to how these IDs are made or what is on them. State by state and even reservation by reservation. (2) Local calls only in the international terminal of an airport. Pure US government. (3) The INS was unable to prove they were who they claimed to be to the satisfaction of the state codes regarding the disclosure of public servant information. (4) Citizen, native american indian, and cop. With a fax of her sheriff ID and badge #, shoved under various INS morons noses.
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Post by Sniffles on May 9, 2020 3:44:15 GMT
You all know, Morrowind sort of sucks. With all my reforestation mods it's still mostly dreary drab scenery and ugly dungeon crawls.
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Post by Aatrnasyn on May 9, 2020 8:25:14 GMT
MGE XE made my Morrowind beautiful. Had some yellow triangles, but don't know if was caused by that or some other mod. I thought it was a real improvement over the default graphics.
What a story! Squishy is quite resourceful, but remind her to bring a photo ID next time!
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Post by Sniffles on May 9, 2020 9:07:46 GMT
MGE XE made my Morrowind beautiful. Had some yellow triangles, but don't know if was caused by that or some other mod. I thought it was a real improvement over the default graphics. What a story! Squishy is quite resourceful, but remind her to bring a photo ID next time! MGE graphics are a definite improvement. Sort of like Van Gogh painting a beautiful landscape on a turd.
That trip. She got off work, got home and got a desperate call from a friend in San Diego who needed some personal emergency TLC. Squishy called the local airport and was told she had less than a half hour to get to the airport and on the plane. The next flight out was 24 hours later. Airport was 25 miles away. She dashed onto the plane as they were shutting the door. In Denver she discovered no seats available to SD. She caught a flight to LAX. Then barely caught the flight to SD. Business taken care of she grabbed a flight to SFO. After the ordeal with the morons she had a 6 hour wait to get back to Denver, managing to miss her flight back home by a half hour. But the trip did teach her to not carry her drivers license in the fold with her cop ID.
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Post by Sniffles on May 12, 2020 9:03:30 GMT
Just some foof here. Wondering about playing Morrowind when I watched a walkthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn. While the graphics aren't as good, high res, you could fit all of Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim maps into less than half of it's open world which is a much more real and sensible far distant future post apocalypse covering a large tasty chunk of North America, condensed. (Canyonlands Utah and the Rocky mountains are lovely BTW. It's also nifty that forests and jungle has reclaimed vast areas.). The weather and day and night, smooth even much more realistic transitions, the LOD up there with Skyrim. The player character is much more mobile and interacts with the environment far better. The enemies, people and monsters, are MUCH better animated and life like. On the whole it made me gag to think of firing up and going back into morrowind. The world of HZD in practical terms, in Skyrim run the PC from Forgotten Vale to Dayspring canyon. It would take over an hour RL time on the HZD map to go corner to corner and at a guess, there would be around 100-130 encounter points along the way. Compare to Skyrims maybe 10-15 encounter/spawning points and the trip taking 15 minutes RL time. And the PC would get dead a couple dozen times. Most of the HZD encounter points have the equivalent of anywhere from 2 to 15 dragons and some will chase you across the entire map. They also added some nifty ideas. Like there are camp sites all over the map that are fast travel points. You have to have discovered them to use them and have put together enough fast travel packs to last the distance. Or you just take command of a horse/machine and ride the distance. And horses are just like RL how they move and are controlled.
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Post by jgf on May 12, 2020 20:53:28 GMT
Not exactly an even playing field to compare a three year old game with an eighteen year old game; but not being familiar with Horizon I did a bit of reading. If I average all that I read, this game must be ... average. The only thing all agreed on was the striking visuals, beyond that opinions varied widely on gameplay, mechanics, character, etc.; they couldn't even agree on system specs.
This was interesting, as it paraphrases a conversation I remember on CompuServe years ago regarding "new" (back then) games,
"The game is formulaic and expected. This isn't what I'd hoped for from a brand new IP. I've already played Far Cry and Tomb Raider. I want to play something new.
The more I think about it, the more I'm surprised at the rave reviews. It's not a bad game, by any means, it's just also emblematic of so many of the problems facing game design in the modern age: Huge budgets due to ridiculous visual fidelity, massive casts and a big open world; so-called "RPG elements" that do little but add grind and tedium to a game, and a lackluster story masquerading as something important and worthwhile."
All a matter of opinion I guess. And we know what opinions are like. (I would be more interested were it first person instead of third person.)
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Post by blockhead on May 12, 2020 21:47:36 GMT
Eighteen years, yikes. Just a few more years and Morrowind will be old enough to buy beer. And no fair comparing it with a much newer game.
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Post by jgf on May 12, 2020 22:17:15 GMT
Grand Prix Legends still has an active online community, an online racing league, and new mods/tracks being released ... it will be 22 in September.
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Post by Emma on May 12, 2020 23:28:25 GMT
My son is currently playing Daggerfall. He has recently finished Arena and Battlespire. Some games are pretty much eternal.
Me? Uhm, I'm playing Ceasar II. From 1996 or so. Still fun.
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Post by Sniffles on May 13, 2020 7:43:06 GMT
And Squishy is forever buried in FO 4 executing her master plan. A. Exit vault 111, leaving the vault suit hanging on a fence at sanctuary.. B. Travel to Salem picking up no armor or weapons except to sell. C. Acquire Reba II. D. Conquer the entire commonwealth buck nekkid - all quests, using only Reba II and the starting 10mm. And me. I'm busy scamming Nalcarya out of 150,000 diamonds using apparatus I stole from her. Master plan-> buy all training to the maximum level at full retail prices.
@emma, I started Daggerfall. It went away with my hard drive. :-(.
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Post by blockhead on May 13, 2020 12:48:45 GMT
@emma, I started Daggerfall. It went away with my hard drive. :-(. Didn't Bethesda re-release that as freeware? Like for a ten year anniversery of its release or something? If so, should be able to get a legit (legal) copy easily. OK: I just checked: quick DDG reveals: download.cdp.bethesda.net/TESDaggerfall_Setup.exedirect from download.cdp.bethesda.net, linked from elderscrolls.bethesda.net/ed/daggerfall. So pos-def legal and legit. I downloaded it when it first went freeware, couldn't get past the first rat, so I gave up.
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Post by dogonporch on May 13, 2020 14:32:21 GMT
My son is currently playing Daggerfall. He has recently finished Arena and Battlespire. Some games are pretty much eternal. Me? Uhm, I'm playing Ceasar II. From 1996 or so. Still fun. My guilty pleasure is still Pharaoh/Cleopatra...also very old...but still very good. Especially on a wide screen.
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Post by jgf on May 13, 2020 16:13:15 GMT
I tried Daggerfall a couple of years ago (almost killed by the first rat also, lol) but couldn't deal with the odd keyboard controls and didn't want to fiddle with a third party remapper.
Played Pharoah briefly just last year, got irritated that I couldn't assign areas to the architects so they were always on the other side of town when a new building collapses, and I get berated for not having enough architects (I felt like half my population was architects).
Recall Caesar (2&3) from ages ago, one of them had a useful bug where if you built the city walls right at the edge of the water the barbarians couldn't attack.
The oldest game I still play is probably SimCity 2000, ca. 1995; also play SimCity 3000, but its micro-management gets annoying. The oldest game I still have is Fungal Man, on a 5" floppy.
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Post by Sniffles on May 29, 2020 7:15:58 GMT
Constance. Got a problem. I'm up to the part where I have to go sweet talk Yanna and run errands for her. All well and good but plot wise, Constance has not proven herself at all. Much more of a liability than an asset, not exactly friendly, pretty much useless when assistance is needed, essentially, a person you wouldn't miss if you never saw her again. And now I'm supposed to smooch a fair weather sort of friend of Constance's arse, cough up a whole lot of money on bribes, run servants errands, pay for her stuff out of my own pocket, all to get Constance's bow back that I could not care less about. Does anyone have any short cuts or suggestions regarding Constance and furthering her quest line? If I don't see some daylight here she can cool her jets in Gnisis forever and won't be missed at all. Does she have any redeeming qualities? Any friends or relatives who aren't self centered and obnoxious? Contributes anything other than me me me me dialogue? I keep hoping there's more depth to her, to the mod. At the least, some intrigue. Or is this the Vilja bottle quest alpha version?
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Post by jgf on May 29, 2020 8:19:30 GMT
That is all part of Constance. She will get you in trouble, she will irritate and annoy you, she is moody, she will drink your booze (while she is a good pack mule, don't let her carry your liquor), but she is also a good fighter who has your back (she often detects enemies before you are aware of them). Her bow is good, but a daedric is better, so I usually give her the first one I acquire ...make sure she has plenty of arrows and keep that bow repaired (early in the game she uses arrows prodigiously so don't give her anything better than steel unless you have a good supply, she will always use the best arrows in her inventory); but you must get her bow to further her quest line (there may be a console cheat to mark that quest as finished, you'd need to ask Emma about that). She uses spells and enchanted weapons indiscriminately so do not give her anything with area effects, she will get you killed or charged with murder.
And do not expect a companion as advanced as Vilja, the scripting of Morrowind isn't up to that. But from the first time I used Constance she became a constant part of my Morrowind, the game is positively lonely without her. I just wish she was NOM compatible, I can imagine her comments on my cooking or us sleeping out in the woods all the time. But she will stand guard while I sleep.
I recommend getting the small mod Emma created which has Constance warp out of battle if her health gets too low, otherwise she will fight to the death. Don't know if that was ever posted anywhere other than in a Morrowind/Constance thread here some years ago.
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