BardicKnowledge

My wife needs a new laptop, as her old one is very quickly dying off. We'd like something that will last a while and won't kill our budget. $1000 is the high point for what we'd like to spend. She's not a big gamer, so we don't need anything top of the line etc. in graphics, but something that isn't integrated would be nice so I can run off with it now and then. Any recommendations?

He's not banworthy yet, though if a character receives a ban, it'll almost certainly be Seth, as he potentially has the craziest offense I've seen so far.

How'd you go about discovering that?

As far as gaming goes, I've found success if I run Steam as an admin, and then instead of double-clicking to launch a game in Steam, I create a desktop shortcut and also run that as admin. It may be redundant, but whatever needs to be elevated in order to run smoothly gets taken care of. Just ran UT3 extremely smooth today, at my max resolution (with otherwise recommended graphics settings -- I have a 7800GTX). Source games also work just fine.

Maximum Carnage for the 16-bit systems was awesome.

Happy birthday to both of you! Do either of you have special plans for the day?

Something similar to NetHack but with (very) slightly more elegant graphics, a smoother spell system, and a (very) slightly more forgiving difficulty was Castle of the Winds, one of the shareware Windows 3.1 greats. It's available here and if you're interested in old RPG's, it's definitely worth your time. Take either Magic Arrow or Heal as your first spell if you want it easy.

And suddenly OA bursts in to win the thread. Well done!

It depends on how deep you want to go. Let's make a chart, shall we? SF2HDR --------------------------------------------------------------SF4 -Casually playing --------------------------------------------------Casual playing ------easier motions to execute ------------------------------------------harder motions, but more forgiving on input -Mid-range playing-------------------------------------------------Mid-range playing ------Combos w/o links -----------------------------------------------------combos w/o links, more forgiving input ------Reversals MUCH harder ---------------------------------------------Reversals very easy, even on crossup ------n/a ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Focus Attacks, absorbing / parries ------n/a ---------------------------------------------------------------------------cancelling Supers from specials -High-level play ----------------------------------------------------High-level play -----1 frame links for some -------------------------------------------------1 frame links for EVERY character -----using Supers in combos ----------------------------------------------FADC --> combo reset or super/ultra Now, IMO linking normals together (the level 5 trials) don't come into play until you get to a higher level of play than most of us are currently at. Note that at mid-range play, you still have a lot more to learn in order to be competitive. The same is true at high level play because roman-cancelling (FADC) doesn't exist in HDR. Therefore, if you want to just dick around, SF4 is much simpler. However, as you practice to a point where you're not flailing around with the buttons, it's easy to see that SF2HDR allows for easier access to the higher levels of play.

This is awesome. Goes to show you that you don't need high quality sounds / samples to do awesome work. I'd submit this as is -- it feels tight enough. Making the piano sound fit in with everything else would be the only change I could suggest -- I don't feel that it's absolutely neccessary. Great mix!

This is completely off topic, but I just wanted to mention that I think Guild Wars was amazing. If I knew that a bunch of people were going to buy GW2 when it comes out, I'd get it for sure. In any case, I don't think the game has been out for a long enough period of time to really validate the neccessity of the crazy link combos -- especially when you take damage scaling into account. Example: Chun-Li's J. Roundhouse, cr. MK --> LK Legs, crouching MK --> super is ridiculously difficult to perform. You have to stick in LK presses between the roundhouse and the crouching MK in order to get the LK Legs to cancel, afterwards you must connect a one-frame link into the crouching MK. That crazy combo above does less damage than J .HP, fireball --> super. Meaning that there is almost no reason to do it ever. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that a majority of the crazy trial mode combos are like this, and we won't be seeing many of these from players, even those at the highest level.

First of all, there _is_ double blind selection in tournaments, regardless of whether the game offers it or not. Second, while there's a shortcut button for the focus attack, there exists no shortcut button for the FADC in either direction, which is what Zircon is complaining about. I'd prefer that a quick tap of the FA immediately initiates the forward dash-cancel, with the attack only coming out if you charge it for some amount of time (which could be very small)...and then having the backward FADC remain the current dash-cancel motion. HDR isn't nearly as bad about disconnects, though I haven't had a lot of problems with that myself.

All of this debating (which I completely agree with both SIrlin and zircon) aside, the worst part of the game thus far is that the only type of multiplayer lobby is 1v1. Why can't we have a group of 6 guys throwing down and BSing over the mic like we can in HDRemix? It's that part of the game that I miss -- sitting around the arcade cabinet talking about other people playing while you wait your turn.

So true -- you'll never play all of the games on the site, so you may as well get used to listening to music because it's good, not because it's from something you know well.

It sounds great! Can't wait to hear the remix of the first stage, as virt's tribute to the jungle music was my favorite track.

The great matches continue -- and Vega can't be the game's worst, as Newt continues to invent new techniques for him that wreck my game.

^You could try switching to Abel, as his rekka-like chain is actually good. The tier list as we're used to it from HDR is completely changed around -- it'll be interesting to see what the pros have to say after a few weeks/months with the game.

One of the key Blanka strategies in HDR was to vary roll distance between hitting, and stopping short --> facebite. Replacing that with an immediate electricity in SF4 makes sense, as Blanka's facebite throw really sucks now in comparison. You can also do this on the 360 with any game...

Lots of good games today, with DarkeSword, AnotherSoundscape, and zircon. Best moment of today was linking Dan's super taunt into his ultra for a win against zirc. Also Arek: if you're on 360, we should mirror match Chun sometime.

I enjoyed the two matches I played, but everyone else in the beta thus far has been ridiculously good at Q3, and I'm not. For that reason, I've gotten out of playing it. I'll probably give it another whirl sometime next week...

Brad, would you mind uploading that star wars one? I realize it's big as hell, but it also looks really neat. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would put it up, either.

I think the sticks used at MAGFest's OCR panel were Hori EX2's, and they felt great. They're also only $50, so they won't destroy a budget. I played Chun at the Gamestop tourney today, where only 4 people picked someone that wasn't Ryu or Ken. The non-shotos are great people -- pick those characters up!

Remember that you can cancel by dashing both forwards and backwards out of the Focus -- the instant you see the yellow to indicate that you've cancelled, start a dash either way. Also, the game scales damage down the longer your combo is -- that means that long strings into super or ultra may not be worth your time. Chun-Li's 2nd hard trial combo certainly isn't (J. Roundhouse, C. Forward, weak Lightning Leg, C. Forward, super).

Command throws as reversals have been a part of the series for a while now -- you'll find them in SF2HDR, and I think that you could do this in Alpha 3 also (super throw as reversal). Don't stand so close when they stand up!