Darkmark

Yeah it is really me. It took a year or so, but I finally got some free time to check back. You know how real life gets. I'm sure there's some classic defence of the StickLauncher but it's been a while. Too long for me to remember what. I'm too busy focused on the fact I can't seem to get over the ancient sig and avatar. I could have sworn it used to move.

Hi guys. Glad to see you're still up and running. It's been a while. It's just a brief check in though. I got curious to how things had fared since I vanished.

It made me laugh. It's true I tells ye...

Good luck with getting a guild hall. Any idea what type of hall you'd be going for? Also the guild hall doesn't have storage or merchants. I think they were planning to add it for factions, but at present it's just a place where your guild can all chill out. (also to have relay races and rock, paper, scissors competitions in, if our guild is anything to go by.) They mentioned something about adding npcs there for Factions, but at the moment it's just guildies and no npcs. But yeah, I'm still 'Griphyne Of Nor' on guild wars, and I'm still on every couple of days. If you need an experienced monk to help with a mission or two you're stuck with I'd be glad to lend a hand. On GMT though, so might be an idea to keep that in mind. http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y143/Lord_Darkmark/Guild%20Wars/Griph.jpg Oh... and I also have been doing a GW sprite comic which you can find at http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1019333#post1019333. Might be worth a look if anyone's interested.

Initial expectations no. Expectations since about october time last year... yes. Don't take the initial no to be negative. I had very high expectations at that time and expected it to be more RTS than global strategy. As a player I prefer the RTS genre. Having said that, EAW is a great game. Not perfect in all respects, but definitely on par with what I came to expect from it.

Low levels, shield generator then hangar. Higher levels, hangar then shield generator. Just the way I do it, but does depend on what type of force you're packing.

Yeah, in my opinion they should get a loss. I know this is hard on all those who have genuine connectivity problems, but consider it like a contagious disease. Once one person disconnects without a loss, the one that experienced that considers the possibility of doing it themselves. It spreads, before long half the people online do it. The d/c = loss is like the vaccine. People (not all of them, but the majority) stop when they realise they gain nothing from it. I haven't yet experienced this with EAW either, but that's only because I haven't had the time for many games, and because the d/c = null game thing probably isn't well known for all those new to the game. If given time, this *could* easily change. Should be fixed, asap.

PFF_Darkmark See how very original I am. I wouldn't have even have had the PFF_ there if they hadn't stolen my name already. :-\ I aught to point out I'm not on much though. Too much to deal with in real life to relax at the moment.

Seems only yesterday there was hardly anybody here and we were celebrating 350 ish members... we've come a long way.

I hate to give such harsh criticism, but at present this is in very little state to comment actively about content and style when the punctuation and layout of each is so appalling. General standards of English are quite simple. After a sentence ends, full stops (Periods if you're American) require two spaces. As it is now it's hard to tell where one sentence begins and another ends even with the stops. Sentences always begin with a capital letter, as does "I" when a character is referring to themselves. When people speak it is always in speech marks. Trying to read this I found so much difficulty trying to identify the person who was speaking. I think an example might help. First is how it looked before. Second is with speech marks and new line per new speaker. I have also put in some additional grammar as I explained about before, capital letters etc. 1) "well Luke i was glad i could help said hons.but you did nothing at all except eat all the jedi ice cream said Luke.hey i only had one bowl" 2) "Well Luke, I was glad I could help" said Hons. "But you did nothing at all except eat all the Jedi ice cream" said Luke. "Hey i only had one bowl" There is a great deal of difference between the two, with the second one you can tell who says what, and it isn't such a mess of conversaton. While I'm talking about conversation, words like "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." I can't see the point in looking up in the Oxford English dictionary, because the exercise would be meaningless. It isn't a word. You don't need it really, instead write something like "He screamed". Or, if you must, cut it to two or three "h"s. I say this for a reason, because by putting so many where it isn't required it makes it even more hard to read. It disrupts layout very badly. Lastly, there is a spellcheck function to posts, and while I would be loathe to put all your faith blindly in it, it can help. Still, it's the punctuation and grammar here which let you down. You might want to just try rewriting one of your current pieces you have here with the format I've tried to explain here, and with any luck you'll see that it makes a massive difference. Trust me. It's all about practice. Don't give up. I'm not trying to be mean, I would just like to see you get better.

Also try not to repeat yourself so soon after you've just said it. Most noticeable was the point: "...and asked if the healers there if they knew what disease he had. They didn’t know right away what disease he had". The repetition doesn't really help, and just breaks up the reader's attention too much. The best way of solving this is to add in an extra sentence or two about his own thoughts/emotions, but it could be done by simply rephrasing one of the two to sound different. There was a part in the second dual you did this in too and it caught my eye. It was where you finish a sentence with 'Edward', and then begin the next with 'Edward', making it feel a bit disjointed. If you can use 'he' instead without causing confusion over who is doing what, then it really helps. Just at a simple glance back to it there are places where this can be done with no trouble. I think I may have said about that 'he' thing before though... Your second dual piece seemed to be better written and less rushed in comparison with the third one. For example: "Edward swam around, searched for his uncle, found him, and grabbed him." There's a lot going on in the time of this one sentence, and as it is, it just feels rushed. If you could pace it out a bit and give some of his emotions, or some detail of surroundings (what the water was like, temperature, appearance) sentences like this would be greatly enhanced. Other than that it's pretty good. As always I'm not being at all derisive of the piece or author's style, I'm just trying to help them get even better with some constructive feedback... etc etc...

It's sounding to be shaping up pretty good. The idea of single player being all on the complete ST timeline does appeal to me... I do wonder where the timeline ends though (if it does at all), since we see glimpses of all manner of future possibilities in each series. I do hope they do skirmish well. A good multiplayer can often make or break a game.

I do like that one. It's too small to make out the text, but the overall shape looks very nice.

I don't get quite what you mean. If you want to post something of a story you'd just post it as normal text. The way most do it I think is to write their story in microsoft word or some other writing program, then use the copy/paste function to just paste the text into their post. This one of mine isn't a great example, looks like some time in the transfer of forums it's screwed up the text a little. Plus it isn't star wars, plus it's really, really old. Also, don't spam the fan fiction with the same question more than once. Doing things like that will earn you a one way ticket to being banned. If you continue to have trouble, and it's a real issue, PM one of the moderators.

I'm willing to bet the heat has died down now for voting. With over 600 votes between them, in order for BFME2 to pull back they need a miracle. I think we have our winner.

Most of the long standing regulars know each other enough that this is more like a friendly competition between all of us. I don't know so much for the others, but I don't feel like boasting about how I might play a game I haven't got yet when the people hearing it are decent people who have just as much of a chance to win as I have. So it's not so much about the win/loss for me. It's more for me about just having a good time competeing and potentially winning a T-shirt. If I go out in the first round, so be it. I'll just need a little more practice. Edit: I'll just add that the outcome I'm interested in is the Ghostly-Garbageben one. Having played against each other before in other games they probably have some insight each other's style of play. Having said that, Dork vs Fosh is going to be epic I'm sure. If I could be a fly on the wall for that to get a glimpse of their in game chat... Probably going to be as funny as hell

Donuts in America, Doughnuts in England. Since those are mine, they're English doughnuts... also since they're mine I smite ye away from them... with a large purple herring found under the moonlight foliage of a tree with bark the colour of strained peaches and a smell of molten lava... not the hot kind. Then draped in sacrificial garments worn by the race previously known as dodo and then frozen in nuclear salt for preservation. Upon this herring is carved the name of Santa's second cousin's dog in a paint paste made from sixteen burnt televisions and the oversized novelty vulcan ears of a Sweedish watchmaker by the name of Ogelbert who has nine daughters each older than he is. Such a herring will surely smite ye away from those doughnuts for good (good implying infinite here, not that it is in any way a good thing to smite with a herring of such wild imagination. It could quite easily be evil. I haven't decided.) Boy, I get crazy when I'm sleepy. Even so, nothing better than late night spam to a topic that's been resurrected from the dead. Ressurected like a lesser known undead herring, large and purple, found under the moonlight foliage of a tree with bark the colour of strained peaches........................................

Bah, we don't just need a number to be evil. Mwuhahahaha... Damn. No evil smileys. Guess we aren't evil then.

Maybe. We shall see. I think a little practice on my part is now in order. BTW, galactic conquest could take some time considering how many matches there are. Perhaps we might want to choose conquests which have a smaller amount of planets for the early matches. Some of us can't spend hours playing a 1v1, and with a whole galaxy that could take a long time... Personally I'd prefer that only the finals be a galactic conquest, that way the whole tournament doesn't last forever. Lastly there are 11 matches there. That doesn't nicely form a tournament tree, since in the second round you'll end up with an odd number to fight against. I'd hate to be thge 11th guy who would just get kicked out. Then after that round, you would get 5 matches and again one guy left over to be dealt with. So basically, the easiest solution is to find 2 more contestants to make the numbers. Then the tournament should go 24 > 12 > 6 > 3. Remaining three take each other on in turn to find out who comes 1st 2nd or 3rd. Just a suggestion, but does need to be addressed though.

In the first of the two recent pictures is, as your guessed, Ursa Major. Also known as the Plough, the Great Bear or Big Dipper. In that picture there's also a good chunk of Draco and at the very top, part of Ursa Minor. You should be able to see it in America, since it's hemisphere that tends to affect what you can or can't see. The second is Orion again (belt is a dead giveaway), and to it's left the almost rectangular Gemini. My memory's a bit fuzzy, so I don't recall what the group above Orion is. Might be Taurus, I know that's somewhere around that area.

Been planning to get myself one of those 6600GTs. Only time will tell though. But like what others have said, more ram is probably your best port of call and has a relatively cheap cost. You don't appreciate how much an extra 512mb does until you have it.

Another vote for the cause. It's a tough thing now because I'm beginning to like the way BFME2 is looking. Still, EAW has the edge. It gets my vote. Battle for Middle Earth II - 367 Star Wars Empire at War - 485 It's still over 100 votes difference, but get voting people who haven't. You know who you are. I'm keeping my eyes on you until you do.

Fileplanet now has the beta for download. Unfortunately it's only for subscribers, but if anyone who didn't pre-order and does have a subscription can now play it. Not being a subscriber I guess I still have to wait for the real thing. ;D http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/bfme2/openbeta/

: I can see you've not done much stargazing. That 'head' of the horse or elk is Orion. Notice the 3 star belt. From that we have the first bit of the body, which is actually Lepus. It's meant to be a hare. And finally, Canis Major. Orion's dog, which is that group of stars on the left.

Yes, in the full game they've said there will be an auto resolve feature. Whether this is restricted to certain modes, I'm unsure. Single player I'm guessing it's a prominent part, but in 1vs1 conquest it could cause some conflict if one player wants to play and one wants to auto resolve. I'm sure there is some means of solution Petroglyph have thought up.