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| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - - Posts by Rydain |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42  Posts: 403/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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| Chess is one of many subjects that I want to get around to learning about in-depth someday. I like to play, and I suppose I'm decent at it, but I think it would be nifty to actually understand how to use good strategies instead of just winging it. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 404/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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| I know the Cat Endgame. Get Cookie's attention, and she'll investigate the chessboard and knock the pieces over so you forget where you were. Everybody wins! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 405/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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Longest - I logged over 80 hours on Final Fantasy Tactics back in the day. I never got around to beating it, though.  I probably spent about that much time messing around with the original Dark Cloud. I never completely beat that one, either. (I finished the game, but I got bored trying to get to the top of the Demon Shaft. I wonder if that save game is still around...I'm rather curious now...)Shortest - A first runthrough of Shadow of Destiny only takes a few hours, and subsequent runthroughs (which you have to do if you want to get all the endings) are even shorter because you can skip already-viewed cut scenes and save some time. Easiest - This touch-screen bartop game called Dead Bug. Bugs appear one at a time, and you have to touch the flies to kill them and avoid the roaches. If you miss too many flies or touch too many roaches, it's game over. This is best played after a few drinks. It's an absolute joke to sober people because it never gets any more difficult. I came across this when I was out to dinner with my family years ago, and I got some ridiculous amount of points and only stopped playing because it was time to leave. Hardest - Deadly Towers...or maybe Devil May Cry because I just couldn't get the hang of the gameplay. Even on the easy setting, I could never get past the sewer mission with that goat-head asshat with the giant scissors. Extreme fast-twitch action in 3D just doesn't work well for me. Edit - Guardian Legend was certainly a toughie, but I didn't think of it because I managed to get very far (to the last boss) without cheats or anything. Some levels, like that infernal Red Grimgrin corridor, required about five gazillion and two retries and tons of frustration (and Enemy Erasers), but it felt so good when I would finally beat them. I suck at Battletoads. I would either die in the end of the third level or wind up crashing into the warp to level five, and I could never get past that one either. Rando can beat it without save states or cheats. Damn his w00t sk1llz.  (edited by Rydain on 01-22-05 01:22 AM) |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 406/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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| Trapster - I haven't actually tried...but considering that board games at our house have been interrupted by Random Acts of Cookie, I'm pretty sure the same thing would happen with chess. We don't even have a chess set here. I need to pick up a nice one at some point. Uly - Yes, chess is quite interesting (and so is game theory).  I'll be more talkative once I get some more sleep, but for now, I found a list of openings and some more basics of strategy and tactics. |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 407/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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Originally posted by Trapster He just has w00t sk1llz...and he practiced at it a LOT. He also uses the warps whenever possible. Be warned...if you play Deadly Towers the way it was intended (without using the password trick to get uber-Myer right at the very beginning), you'll be working on it for quite a while. You'll probably want to make heavy use of save states as well. One of the reasons the game can be so difficult is that it's easy to die and when you die, you lose all your money and expendable items (like potions) and have to start over at the beginning. Save states help with that. However, they won't help you navigate the nutty wraparound dungeons and locate (and survive) the parallel zones where the good items are. If you get too frustrated, there is a walkthrough on GameFAQs. |
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Rydain Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 408/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours |
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| Before I found out definitively that the dungeons wrap, I guessed that they did because I was able to walk horizontally for a very long time (I remember trying to count the width of the dungeon and getting up to at least 30 rooms) and I didn't think they'd be quite that wide. Years before that, I had seen a random strategy guide with dungeon maps, and none of them had a long, skinny shape. Even without this information, you might realize that the area wraps if you work your way horizontally for a while and run into rooms that seem awfully familiar. There's a walkthrough on GameFAQs with maps of all the dungeons. Some of them have holes, and the game's manual mentions that the scroll that warps you within a dungeon might put you in a closed room (i.e. a room unreachable by just walking around normally). It makes me wonder if those holes in the map actually contain rooms and if there's anything good inside. Have you ever tried looking for the closed rooms? I ought to because I have an emulator and the ROM on here, but I don't really feel like it because I'm a lazy bum. |
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Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 410/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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*stickies* |
Well...I could write a book on exercising and eating healthfully, as I've been working on that for the past 3 years. Improving my body composition and fitness is a major aspect of my lifestyle.Fitness and Nutrition for Beginners If you're new to the diet and exercise thing, start simple. Like Anya suggests, find some exercise that you enjoy and can do on a regular basis. Make basic, gradual changes to your diet. Habits are easier to form if you take them slowly. For instance, you can start by working on only eating when you're hungry (and not when you're bored, tired, thirsty, etc.) and only eating enough to satiate you. If you go out to eat and order something and it turns out to be ginormous, you can always eat what you need to and just take the rest home for later. Work on eating less junky food and more nutritious food like fruits and vegetables, good sources of protein (lean meat, fish, tofu, eggs, cottage cheese), and whole grains. Again, this is best done over time. It can be difficult to cut down on (or stop eating) favorite foods that aren't particularly nutritious. Just get a good idea of what sorts of foods are best to eat and try to choose them whenever you can. One of the first dietary clean-up changes I made was to pretty much stop drinking sugar (regular pop, juice, and other calorie-dense drinks). Instead, I drank water and diet pop. (If you hate diet pop, try tea either plain or artificially sweetened. Splenda tastes just like sugar, believe me.) This change alone cut several hundred calories from my average daily intake. Fitness and Nutrition for the Hardcore If you want to be especially muscular and cut up, which is what I'm after, things get more interesting. Regular heavy weight training is a must, as is major diet-related willpower. To add any significant quantity of muscle mass, you have to bulk (eat a lot of calories, including adequate protein) for at least a month while continuing to lift heavy weights. This sounds fun because you really can eat everything in sight, but you're going to gain some fat that you will have to get rid of later in a fat-loss phase. I would suggest learning to lose fat before you try bulking so you know that you'll be able to do so in the future. And as far as fat loss is concerned, the lower your bodyfat gets, the more your body tries to hold onto it, so more...interesting dietary manipulation is required. For this reason, I am currently on a cyclical ketogenic diet. Despite the seemingly bizarre macronutrient balance it calls for (very low carbs during the week, tons of them on the weekend), I am eating quite healthfully, and I'm losing fat surprisingly fast. I just might get that six-pack this year... Some Recommended Exercise and Nutrition Links Krista's awesome weight training site Exercise @ about.com Videofitness (restricted) |
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 412/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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I said it back on USENET in 1997, and I'll say it again: Anaconda. Crap like Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was at least so stupid that it was funny. (MK: A amused me because it was like a cross between a cliched '80s metal video, MyFirstFlashProject.swf, and a terrible low-budget kung fu movie.) Anaconda didn't even have that going for it. Some people thought it was campy and fun, but to me, it took itself too seriously and was therefore just plain boring. |
(I knew it was going to be terrible from the previews, but I went to see it anyway because a friend had a job reviewing movies for some local newspaper, she was assigned to it, and I couldn't let her suffer alone.)
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 413/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Yes, I do. |
We got it right after it first came out, and I still enjoy playing it. There's a sequel in the works, and I can't wait to see what it's like.
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 414/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Yeah...there really isn't much to multiplayer in the first game. It's neat to be able to pick up the other player's katamari, but the circular arena is small and boring. I would like to see a mode where players start off in different parts of areas that resemble the ones in the single-player game. It would be even more nifty if it supported hooking consoles together so a bunch of people could all be rolling around in the same giant level. I'm not much for multiplayer gaming in general, but I would love that. |
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Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 417/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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The tag is parsed into this: |
<div style=color:black;background:black class=fonts><font color=white> <b>Spoiler:</b></font><br>See?</div> I don't think there's any good way to change the background within a style sheet. It may be possible to redefine the fonts class with a different background color and then set it back to normal in a style in the end of your post, but I haven't tried this, so it may very well do nothing at all. I think it would be easiest to make your own spoiler div code and copy and paste it as needed.
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 418/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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I've been out of school for a while, so I'll just list some memorable college courses. |
Favorites Advanced German - I took two challenging high-level undergrad German classes with the same professor: grammar and composition and a medieval literature class that was taught in German at the prof's house. I learned a ton and did very well in both of them. Computer Graphics - Best. Comp sci elective. Ever. The prof was teh r0x0r and we learned quite a lot about general graphics programming and OpenGL. I made a terrarium where amoebae ate burgers and rocket-powered sporks chased them around. (And no, I was not under the influence of anything illegal when I came up with that idea. )Math - I love higher math. I aced the two basic calculus classes and multivariate calculus as required by my curriculum, and I also took differential equations as an elective because I wanted to understand how they worked. Rando still thinks I'm nuts for doing that. It was taught (very well) by an awesome friend of ours who was at the time studying for his Ph.D in math. Most disliked Operating systems - The prof wasn't bad, but the class involved learning a fuckassload of brand new material that I'm not very good at dealing with. You need to get a C in this class to graduate, and it wasn't uncommon for people to have to retake it once or twice. I was happy to get a C+ on my first try. Hardware-related stuff - I did OK in these classes (I at least got B's), but I found the material boring, and of course I've long since forgotten it. I am much more into programming and algorithms than hardware engineering. (restricted) |
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 420/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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*Rydain adds this to the list of problems she's never going to have |
Hooray for Debian! At any rate...I understand that Microsoft wants to limit their OS improvements to paying customers...but this chafes my ass because unpatched Windows boxes affect the rest of us as well. Much of the spam I receive is sent through zombie drones, virtually all of which run Windows. Somebody on Slashdot suggested that they limit upgrades of DirectX instead. Nobody is going to get trojaned and have their box turn into a zombie drone because DirectX is old, and they'll actually care about updating that so they can play the latest games (whereas many people just don't give a crap about security fixes because they don't understand how important they are).
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 421/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Here's another highly rated game that I liked for a while and just couldn't pick back up. It's especially surprising because I was super duper hyped for its release. |
Dark Cloud 2 The original Dark Cloud got mixed reviews, but I absolutely loved it. I didn't mind the parts that many people found boring and tedious. When I heard about the sequel, I was all excited, even before it came out and started getting high ratings across the board. We got it and I played it for a while, but something just wasn't right. Dark Cloud was crack...Dark Cloud 2 didn't have the same effect. The basic gameplay is pretty similar. In both games, you go around randomly generated dungeons floor by floor to collect materials that you use to reconstruct towns. You can play as multiple characters and switch on the fly (though sometimes the game limits you to one character for a specific floor). Using weapons gets them experience that you can use to absorb items into them to increase different attributes. When you raise attributes enough, you can evolve the weapon into a better one. Weapons also have hit points, and you have to fix them with repair powder when they get weak. So what's the problem? Certain core gameplay aspects were tweaked enough that they got on my nerves after a while. World building In the original Dark Cloud, you looked for specific pieces of towns: houses, people, trees, rivers. Putting the town back together felt like assembling a puzzle. In Dark Cloud 2, you gather sets of instructions for making houses, trees, etc. out of raw materials, and you have to collect people from your hometown to populate the settlements with. This is a more flexible setup that has its merits, but I didn't find it as enjoyable and satisfying as putting Humpty back together again, especially because some of the people are a pain in the ass to recruit and you need specific ones to put in certain places. For instance, you have to win a footrace to get the sheriff. I didn't actually get that far, but I saw Rando do this about a bazillion times before he finally got it, and it didn't seem to be my idea of fun. In contrast, I loved looking for pieces in the dungeons because it would generally take a few floors for you to collect enough to finish a certain building, so I'd be curious about what parts I was going to find next and excited to finally get that last one I needed. Collecting underpants^Wgood stuff As you may gather, upgrading weapons is a very important aspect of gameplay. To upgrade most efficiently, you need to use attachments that give you large stat bonuses. These are, of course, difficult to come by in both games, but the mechanisms by which you find them are quite different. The dungeons in Dark Cloud feature backfloors: somewhat secret areas with more challenging enemies and more valuable treasure. Backfloor entrances appear frequently, but you need a certain item to use them, and that item is generally a rare treasure from the dungeon. (There's one dungeon with purchasable backfloor keys, but even if that weren't available, I would still prefer this game's item hunting. Anyway...) You're not guaranteed to find good attachments in a backfloor, but you usually get at least one. Dark Cloud 2 requires that you play Spheda, a golfing minigame that is available once you clear a dungeon floor. This would be fun if its difficulty didn't vary widely each time, if you didn't have to kill all the enemies every time you wanted to play, and if you could get more than one good treasure per floor. As it stands, it may take you a while to get a reasonably winnable Spheda setup, and once you get the good treasure on a particular dungeon floor, poof - that's it. You can still play, but you'll get a crappy treasure if you win. This makes good item hunting a much more tedious and unreliable process. In all fairness... Dark Cloud 2 is not without its improvements. For example, when a weapon's HP reaches zero, it just becomes useless. In the original game, weapons just broke and were lost forever. I never had a problem with that because I saved often and always had auto-repair powder equipped, but it was still bad game design, and I was happy to see it fixed. I just wish the dungeon crawling experience would have remained as addictive as it was in the first game.
Rydain |
Ropa Blaze Phoenix Runs With the Dragon Within Level: 42 Posts: 422/738 EXP: 490056 For next: 31306 Since: 03-15-04 From: State College, PA Since last post: 6 days Last activity: 8 hours
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Cottage cheese pancakes are teh w00t. They're healthy and fun to make (even if you're like me and generally dislike cooking), and if you use my recipe, they'll taste like dessert. |
3 or 4 eggs 1 1/2 cups of cottage cheese 8 teaspoons of Splenda (you can use sugar if you prefer it, but I like Splenda because it tastes the same and has zero calories) Vanilla and orange extract to taste 1 1/2 cups of plain uncooked oatmeal Start the blender and put everything in in that order, making sure that the blender contents are well-mixed before you add the next major ingredient. I find that it works best to not dump all the oatmeal in at once. Add maybe half of the oatmeal, let the blender run until it's absorbed, and then add the rest. Blend the mixture until it's smooth. Cook like normal pancake batter over medium heat (put batter on the skillet, flip the pancake when it bubbles, cook until done) and enjoy. I usually top mine with cinnamon and more Splenda. Fruit or syrup would probably be good as well. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - - Posts by Rydain |
I only got to the 8th level.