MasterDex

And never will if you don't commit! Seriously though, I can't imagine playing Diablo on anything but a keyboard and mouse. It seems to me a controller would be very limiting, especially in the tougher battles.

I can't say I'm even a passing expert on UK politics but from my understanding, Scotland already have a well established government so I can't see there being a huge difference, other than financially for either side if Scottish indepedence was granted.

Yeah, I had a feeling I was going a bit overboard with Derg's dialect. "'ung" in place of young, in particular, acts as a bit of a wall on first sight. I want to see how the story turns out before I decide whether to shop it around or not but I hear ye on the spelling and grammatical errors. The spelling should have been ok since I ran it through a spellchecker but I'm afraid I'll never get the grammar right -anyone that's read the first drafts of my articles can attest to that weakspot. I wanted to make King Sarán come across as very grandiose, almost cartoonishly so but I hear what you're saying. He might end up seeming completely out of place in the end. Balancing between descrption, action and dialogue is probably the greatest problem I have with writing stories. I always feel like I either have too much information like in this case, too much dialogue or not enough action. It's certainly something I'll be working on. I'm not sure how long the story will be yet. I have a vague roadplan in my head which at its simplest boils down to boy gets exiled, grows as a person through adventure then returns to his home. Beyond that, I have some of those adventures planned but it would be very easy at the moment to bring the story down to novella size. The biggest issue I face at the moment, I think, is that it's been so long since I've written anything but internet comments or articles so it's been hard to get back in the rhythm of it all. Not at all! The more critique, the better. If I wanted people to just tell me how great I am, I wouldn't have thrown it up...well....I probably would have, but I want the negative and the positive.

With the length of development, that doesn't surprise me in the least. The only question is whether it will affect the PC version - speaking of mechanics, Diablo isn't a game that should need to be modified to work on consoles. The only thing I do see changing is the hotbar bing made into a radial menu or something for consoles.

Thanks for the feedback. I never spotted the begun/began bit while checking over it and I have no idea why marraige wasn't caught by the spellchecker. In regards to the volume of names being thrown at the reader so early on, what would you suggest? I know Brain or 6264 mentioned that paragraph two and three were too much description all at once so do you think editing that section down or spreading out the information contained therein would help with what you're talking about? Originally, those two paragraphs weren't present and Ruark was only ever called 'the boy' but then I felt there was too little information. I guess I overcompensated.

GO DIE IN A FIRE, LONG JOHNNY SILVER!

I finally got around to publishing my article on the surge of indie development. I had originally hoped to get some quotes from some of the names I dropped but I'm no good at formal emails so things didn't go as I'd hoped. I'm still happy with the article itself however as I had planned from the start for this inevitability - would have been nice if David Perry, at least, got back to me though, he's the real success story of the Spectrum era of indie development.

I am! I'm the guy that looks like Jesus - http://pressxordie.com/meet-the-team/ The best thing about Irish history is that it's so easy to change as a fantasy writer. For example, The myth behind the irish name of Ireland - Éire - tells of three women (the wives of three Tuatha Dé Danann Kings) Eriu, Banba and Fodla, who each asked the Míl Espáine to name the island after them should they conquer it. Once they did - through the stipulations of the three kings, Amergin the bard named the island after Éiru. In my story, the name of the island is Banvar, after Banba. Then there's the legends that some Irish settlers came from Scythia, were the decendants of the biblical Noah, came from Gaul or in the case of the Milesians, from Spain; having found it from the Tower of Hercules, the oldest lighthouse in the world (still standing strong) - all this is nigh on impossible to factually prove however and much of it comes from the Book of Invasions, a pseudohistory written by christian monks. So yeah, plenty of untapped source material to dive into.

So I did! Speaking of PSU's, Here's a handy calculator to help you figure out what your minimum wattage will be. If you plan on adding parts in the future, be they front panel LCD screens or even just hard drives, it's a good idea to give yourself some headroom of between 100-200w. I like 750w for the average system, it gives plenty of headroom for expansion. I'd als recommend a modular power supply if you like to keep things tidy. I'll echo Dean's and say make sure it's a good brand. The PSU is one part you don't want to skimp on as it could cost you more than just the power supply should it go belly up - a good sign is the warranty the PSU comes with, the top brands often offer limited lifetime warranties whereas other brands may only offer 1-5 year warranties. You'll know you have a good PSU if there's a bit of weight to it - Every time I've suspected a power supply of failing, I'd be so sure I was right when I had the PSU in my hands and felt the weight that I would've placed money on it, I would have won the bet in most cases too.

This thread is where I'm going to throw anything that I write outside of PXOD articles. It may include shoddy drafts, poetry, never-to-be-published articles, etc. Essentially, anything that I'm either not ready to publish or plan on never publishing officially. First off, I'd like to give an excerpt from a recent novel I've begun writing, Before I do, I'd like to give a bit of a background to the novel. For ages, I've wanted to write a fantasy steeped in the history and folklore of Ireland. I've always felt that it's one of the richest to exploit for fantasy yet so often ignored. Up until the monks, Ireland had no written history and what was written of it is circumspect at best. From the Partholón to the Tuatha Dé Danann and beyond, the history of how the Irish came to be is mysterious and ready to be exploited by any budding fantasy writer. In this novel, I do what I've always wanted - Take Irish history and mythology (along with Iron and Dark age reality) and have fun with it all. What you'll read next is a very early draft (literally written this week) of my first attempt to do so. There may be grammatical errors and the flow of language may not be great but it's the early formation of the aforementioned ideals applied to the framework of a story I've wanted to write for years. Please feel free to express your thoughts, both good and bad about all that you see in this post and, subsequently, in this thread. P.S If you think it's all a load of crap, blame Saturnine and his novel, Within Ruin, for reawakening my desire to write fiction.

I'm not going to throw my nose up at free games but am I the only one who's first thought was something along the lines of "attention-whore much?"

I can't say I'm familiar with 'arse first' myself but head over heels has always made sense to me. If you're going head over heels, it's usually insinuated that you're tumbling or flipping - so that at one point your heels are above your head and your head has flipped over your heels.

I have to agree with Goh on the i5. Although I've never tried either an i5 or an i7 system, all reviews and info I have read on both have indicated that the i7 only comes into its own for professional work where multiple cores are crucial. For a gaming system, all signs point to the i5 as being the port of call, so to speak, for gaming - and it saves you a good $100. But stick to the K series. The K signifies that it's open to overclocking and although you may not overclock for some time, it can be a great comfort to know you can get more - the i5 and i7 K's have been reported to reach 3.2ghz without breaking a sweat. I'd also strongly suggest that you get no more than 8gb of ram unless you know you require more for your profession. Realistically, there are literally a handful or so of games that will utilize more than 3gb of ram and those few that do will still run more than acceptably on 4gb of ram. With ram, what you want to consider is what the highest usage will be per program plus what windows and your pagefile (virtual memory) will use. With WinXp, this tops off at 3.3gb, with Win 7, it's more around 4.5, all things considered. 8gb of ram ensures plenty of headroom for anything coming our way in at least the next 2 years and buying two 4gb sticks means that should you find yourself needing more later down the line that it's an easy and cheap upgrade to 16gb. As far as graphics go, I'm a personal believer in sticking to the middle-line. The GPU manufacturers like to tout "the fastest card" every season but the reality is that it will provide only a marginal improvement over last season's "fastest" card. Because the difference between last season's (not even last year's) top of the line card and this season's is so small, you're better off going for the middle of the line card that will, in most cases considering the games released over the last 4 years, see you being able to run high/medium at respectable framerates. Should you find that your GPU becomes the bottleneck of your system, it's easy to double up with a second card of the same type to improve your performance (again, in most cases. There are certain games, and certain settings that won't play well with crossfire/SLI). It's also worth keeping in mind that with the latest and "greatest" cards comes a pricedrop in the lesser cards. I honestly, even if you had the money to burn, would never recommend buying the "top-of-the-line" cards. As far as motherboards go, I'd stick to the P67 chipset (as far as intel CPU's go) rather than going for the newer Z68. The motherboard I'm eyeing up for myself is the Asrock extreme 6, it's rated as one of the best P67 motherboards out there at the moment and doesn't ask for too much cash but should you find it's a bit on the expensive side for yourself, there are other cheaper alternatives that offer good quality. Either way, I'd recommend the P67 chipset for anyone planning an Intel build for a gaming PC. An SSD is a sound idea but their price per GB is still very expensive right now. To combat this, a few manufacturers have started to release go betweens that will allow for flash caching using traditional HDDs. As far as actual HDD storage goes, I feel 1TB internally should be enough. If you're concerned about contingency, double this to 2gb in a standard raid 1 setup. Personally I think the best solution for music, video and document storage is an external HDD or NAS as it allows for portability and speeds up the backup/repair process as it allows you to keep all your important data in an 'off-site' location. Unless you plan to get every ounce of power out of your system (or you wanna be that guy) there's no great reason to go watercooled. Most aftermarket active cooling solutions are more than adequate for your everyday gamer. I would not recommend sticking with stock cooling for long if you plan on doing any serious amount of gaming. Stock coolers are designed for the everyman browsing the web, etc infrequently over the course of a couple of years, they're not designed to keep a gaming system healthy over the course of several years. Finally, soundcards should only be a consideration, really, if you consider yourself an audiophile (or you've grown a hate for the likes of realtek over the years). Most quality motherboards come with decent onboard sound (or a decent PCI soundcard) that only connoissuers will scoff at. However, if you're like me, you'll want to link up as much to your system as possible and an aftermarket soundcard coupled with a front/rear panel that allows for multiple connections (TOSLINK, SPDIF, MIDI, etc) can be invaluable. P.S. Don't go any smaller than a full tower if you plan on a serious system. Though they may appear too big and bulky, you'll be glad of the extra ventilation they provide as well as the extra room you have to work with. Best of luck on the build whatever your choices, you couldn't pick a better time to go for it.

What's Dark Souls doing that every other game should be doing? I also don't see what the problem with modding would be. As Excel said, it's personal choice. Why would you argue against something that would have no effect on you should you wish not to have anything to do with it? Seems like your trying to force your own preferences onto others.

Funny you should say that! Warning: If you're of a squeamish disposition, don't open the spoiler. And yeah, it's a real thing.

Because, if you recall, the original point was to have an equivalent to Nathan Drake. Not only a protagonist but one that 'men want to be'. Sort of a Jack Harkness of video games? That's exactly the kind of gay/bi character gaming needs. Hell, get Barrowman behind the voice for it too! That man has charisma in spades. If I was gay, I totally would.

I think the word 'roast' scares a lot of people. The mother of a friend of mine was always afraid of over/undercooking it so she never attempted it, especially when cooking shows can often be so grand with their roast recipes. I told him to tell her essentially what you just said and both of them have thanked me for it a few times ever since. One thing I despise with Roasts is the use of cloves. Do not use them. Despite being an old wive's favourite, they overpowers the meat too much and they don't do it any favours even when used sparingly. If you feel you MUST use them then add a few to the gravy and let them flavour it a bit before removing them.

Agreed 100%. I hate the little shits that do that on purpose. Instaban for definite. I still can't believe that DICE never solved the Titan glitch.

I really enjoyed the FFVII, VIII and IX end-game bosses. It's too late to think of any more but good thread idea! I'll be back!

It would have some use for oven recipes as Kovach said though - the amount of people that overcook chops is astonishing.

I knew I recognised that name! @Allan: I liked your piece on the difference between best/favourite game. Very good point.

Welcome to the forums! We're a friendly bunch....most of the time. Just don't stress too much if someone seems like they're attacking you. Things can get heated but what happens in the thread stays in the thread....mostly. Hopefully I haven't scared you off already, lol

Why not just use the ressurect console command? Saves time and progress.