HalcyonSpirit

The gaps in my Zelda lore knowledge are starting to show. I wasn't aware of this, thank you. Even so, if that sort of reference is the extent of the mentions of Ganondorf, then it doesn't really change the fact that Ganon is the one always referred to when talking about the evils of the world, not Ganondorf. To the people, Ganondorf would likely just be the origin of Ganon and not regarded as a great evil to be feared in his own right, if only because of the contrast between the two's effects on the world. Again, it's just speculation, but I do believe there's a contrast being made in these games by the developers and that the name does have some significance. Perhaps not exactly what I'm proposing, but I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

Noted. Really, for as much as I loved Wind Waker, I should have remembered those instances. Still, the correlation is there for my hypothesis, I think. But now I'll counterpoint my own argument: 'Ganon' could be the moniker used by the people for any ill-defined, sufficiently large evil they encounter. As I mentioned before, the name Ganon is primarily used to refer to him in his monster form, and what better way to describe a huge unknown force of evil than to call it a monster? So it could be that the name of Ganon has become the name for great evils in whatever timeline this falls into, due to the fact that, in at least the Wind Waker and the LttP timelines, Ganon does make an appearance and could have made a lasting impression on both timelines' histories (moreso in the LttP timeline, obviously). That the King of Red Lions refers to Ganon as such in the Wind Waker timeline lends some credibility to the idea, I think.

There's a lot of speculation running along the line that this game comes after Wind Waker. Not surprising, really, since there's a fair bit of circumstantial evidence supporting it. But let's back up a bit. The "Calamity Ganon". We don't know much about it, really, but consider its name carefully: 'Ganon'. Pretty much anyone that knows about the Zelda games will know that name. We've seen it in the early games up to and including Ocarina of Time, and it's always been associated with a dark monster of some kind. But then in that game, we're presented with a new name: 'Ganondorf', associated with a person, not a monster. And then we find out the two are the same – Ganondorf becomes Ganon. Simple enough, but here's the interesting bit. Take a look at the official timeline: Wiki page Direct link to picture There's three timelines splitting from Ocarina of Time: One where Link stops Ganondorf as a child, leading to Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess, one where Link defeats Ganon as a child and seals Ganondorf away, leading to Wind Waker, and one where Link is defeated by Ganon, leading to A Link to the Past and, notably, the original Zelda and Zelda 2. Notice something? Following Ocarina of Time, Ganondorf returns in the timelines of Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, while it is -Ganon- that returns in the timeline of A Link to the Past and the original Zelda and Zelda 2 because Link was defeated after Ganondorf transformed into Ganon. Ganon is, as far as I'm aware, never mentioned in the Twilight Princess and Wind Waker timelines since Ganon either never existed or never made an impact as Ganon in those two timelines where he is defeated. The flip side is that Ganondorf is never mentioned as Ganondorf in the A Link to the Past timeline, since his impact is most notable in history as Ganon. And now here we are with this new game, where -Ganon- is mentioned, not Ganondorf. This would suggest that this game is in the A Link to the Past timeline, as the name "Ganon" should not be known in the other two timelines unless something drastic happened that we're not privy to yet. In addition, the current final games in the A Link to the Past timeline are the original Zelda and Zelda 2, which fall into the Era of Decline, referring to the Kingdom of Hyrule if I recall correctly. Considering that, from what we've seen of this new game, Hyrule is now virtually gone; this may suggest that this game comes after those original games. What's in a name... So two notes: 1. "What about the Koroks?" — The Koroks are the Kokiri from Ocarina of Time, and they reverted to their Korok states in Wind Waker due to the state of the world. Kokiri are also mentioned in other games, I believe. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the same reversion happens at some point in the other timelines; perhaps they revert when a strong society or something around them ceases to exist (for instance, Hyrule). 2. "What about the rock salt in the mountain?" — Perhaps another Great Flood happened in the LttP timeline. Or perhaps new mountains were lifted up somehow, bringing low-lying, previously underwater ground up with it – this game appears to have more mountains in it than I remember existing in Hyrule previously. Regardless, there are ways for it to find its way up there. It's good evidence for being after Wind Waker, but it is far from conclusive. Anyway, that's it for my thoughts at the moment.

Welp, scratch the hope it was the hard drives (at least the ones I unplugged, anyway). Time to test some other stuff like the GFX card and the DVD drive.

Thanks for the offer, but it's actually not that computer. The parts are from the same time period, though! It's an i7-920 rather than the Core2 Quad Q9550. When my old workplace was shut down I salvaged the parts from the computers they were tossing. I still have the computer you built for me, but these days it serves as a makeshift file server. It's only a little better in performance, but when it's that old, every little bit counts. Anyway, after I posted I decided to pull out some of the hard drives I had in the computer to see if something relating to them was the issue. Something like the drives themselves throwing errors, or the motherboard somehow suddenly not working properly with so many drives connected, or the power supply getting too old and not putting out enough power to support it all anymore. The power supply one was a hunch based on the fact that its uptime is probably about as long as the computer is old; I don't think anyone ever turned their computers off at my workplace, so it was probably running for essentially 5 years straight, give or take. After a few days of running the computer with the drives disconnected, I haven't had any further issues. Well, I'm not saying it's solved, though, since it wasn't completely consistent in happening. I'll give it some more time and see if it happens again. If it doesn't, then I have to figure out what the root cause was so I can avoid that in the future.

I may be getting that new computer sooner rather than later, due to an annoying problem with my current one, unless I can figure out what the problem with it is. When I boot up my computer for the first time for the day, there's a very good chance of it BSoDing within the first few minutes due to some unknown error. However, on subsequent restarts it doesn't have the problem until the next day (presumably it's more of a 'after it's been off for a while' situation). The BSoD usually presents itself by first freezing the Windows UI for a few minutes (but not the mouse, oddly enough) before presenting the BSoD, after which it may or may not do its error dumping and restart. Regardless, once I restart, I almost never have an issue, though occasionally programs will behave oddly (like Chrome tabs and extensions constantly crashing) until I restart again. The only thing I've noticed in particular is that, when I restart and log into the computer after a crash, it plays that 'new device plugged in' chime, but I'm not sure what it's detecting. The only thing sitting in my Removable Devices icon is my GTX 750 card (which is odd in itself, actually). I've run WhoCrashed to see if it could tell me anything, but all the crash dumps point back to the Windows kernel (ntkrnlmp.exe) but with different exceptions: PFN_LIST_CORRUPT, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, and SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M are the most recent four. I've run Memtest for 8 cycles and it found nothing wrong with the RAM, so I'm not sure what the issue might be. Hardware or software... Hardware is the most likely cause, since I think this started not long before I reinstalled the OS, but not as bad as it is now. I'm in the middle of trying to remove extra hardware one at a time to see if I can pinpoint a cause, but it's difficult since I can't know it's worked or not until I've gone a long while without a problem. But I'm guessing a CPU or Mobo problem is most likely, given the range of errors being spat out. What a pain...

Well, the MSRP for a 6700k is $350, while the price for one these days has been around the $410-420 range for a while now. I haven't seen a sale price for it dip below $370 since the shortage started last year. But since you bring it up, what's the significant differences between the Haswell-E series, like the 5930k, and the Skylakes? I can see the additional cores on the Haswell, but also a lower single-core clock rate. I've heard they don't overclock as nicely, too, but I don't actually know all that much about either.

Any idea when the Skylake line of CPUs might come back down in price from the highs they've been at lately? I've been planning on upgrading my computer for a while now, and now that I have the income to support it, I'm starting to look at what I need. I'm on an i7-920, so it's not like I can just swap out to a more modern CPU since the socket is different, so I figure this upgrade is the time to go all-in on a complete hardware refresh: new mobo, new CPU, new RAM, and eventually new GFX cards. But with Skylake being so jacked up in price, I'm not willing to shell out for it yet since I can still get by with what I have. Even the sale prices for Skylake have been above MSRP lately...

Now that I'm thinking about it, with RBY getting a re-release, I wonder if there's any chance in the world that we'd get Pokemon Stadium as well. I think I spent as much time in Stadium as I did in the main games, and the thought of reliving that with online functionality... The nostalgia is strong tonight.

Oh man, I might just pick one up for the nostalgia alone. It's been so long since I played the originals. Hell, might get all of them just because, but Yellow might be the first. Something about having that little yellow rodent following behind you still makes me grin a little to this day.

I've started streaming games on my channel recently. I'm not looking to make it a big thing, just something I can sit back, relax, and chat with people while playing. I'm currently finishing off a run through Mechwarrior 4: Mercs (and may do a second salvage-only run afterward), and previously played through Valkyria Chronicles for the very first time. I'm already planning on playing things like Fallout 4, X3: Albion Prelude, XCOM, and any number of other games as well. But I play what I want to play and if people want me to play something specific, I very well might. With the unveiling of Twitch Creative recently, I'm also thinking about starting to do some story writing on there. I've needed an excuse to get back into writing more seriously, and this is as good an excuse as any. So if any of that is your thing, come swing by. http://www.twitch.tv/beardedbardiche

Hm... depends on what exactly you're expecting. The X series, and more specifically X3, has more replay value in the breadth of options and the freedom you have when playing. You'll certainly have fun finding sectors and stumbling upon different factions and bases and such, but it's the freedom of action that is the main draw. Want to fly as a solo wares trader across the universe? You can do that. Thinking about flying as a pirate hunter, you against them all? Yeah, go ahead. Itching to manage a fleet of traders to gain dominance over the universe's economy? Yup, that's fine. Fancy being a squadron leader, taking your wingmen out to patrol the border territories? Sounds good. Smuggling wares under the noses of the police strike you as fun? Awesome. Desire to command a fleet of ships against the might of the Xenon machines? Good luck! And so on. X3 is more of a sandbox than anything else. And with the addition of mods, you can make the game more like what you want. Certain options you'll want to use mods for moreso than others. For instance, there are mods that greatly enhance the threat of the Xenon with true invasions and conquering of territory, to the point where you will most certainly need a fleet in order to stop them. There are mods that revamp the economy, that increase the difficulty, that make it so losing a fight truly means something for your plans. I love the game, but it's not for everyone. The biggest sticking point is that it's a game where you need to make up your own fun. Set your own rules. For instance, there's a group of people that play the game under Dead is Dead rules: there's no reloading saves, and if they die, that's it, that's the end of that particular playthrough. Others have strict rules where they can only do certain things according to the personality of the character they've come up with in their heads, like never fighting, or always shooting a certain race on sight, or whatever else. If I manage to figure out how to get streaming to work, I'll invite you to watch me play it a bit. See if it catches your interest. Or, of course, you can also hit up Youtube for lets plays of the games. I'm sure there are plenty of modded and unmodded videos up there.

Wonderful! You can get Freespace and Freespace 2 on GOG together for cheap, and I highly recommend you get the totally free Freespace Open mod/upgrade to pair with Freespace 2. It adds a lot of graphical upgrades, features and mods and campaigns to Freespace 2, including the ability to play the original Freespace game's campaign within Freespace 2. You don't have to miss any of the upgrades in the sequel in order to still play through the entire campaign! I'm going to be playing through the two campaigns fairly soon in addition to getting my X3 run going. Long live the space sim.

Oh boy. And here I was thinking about starting another X3 run soon anyway. Perfect timing. Have you played any sort of space sim game? X-Wing, Freelancer, Freespace, anything of the sort? Those games are much more focused in scope compared to the X series, so it might be worth it to play one or more of them before jumping into the X series. In fact, they're worth playing regardless. I personally recommend Freespace 2 So, right off I'll tell you that I've only ever played the X3 games. I haven't played X1 or X2. Couldn't tell you much about them other than "they're much older and are a bit different in scope and gameplay compared to the X3 games from what I understand. As for what you should start with, well... I know that while there's an overarching storyline in the games of some sort, none of it is necessary for enjoyment of any individual game. I jumped right into X3 and haven't found myself wanting for story details. So personally, I think you can just jump into X3 if you want the most recent in the main line of X games (because Rebirth was nothing but a rumor and you'll never convince me otherwise). X3 has three games in its line: Reunion, Terran Conflict, and Albion Prelude. They're all on the same engine and share most of the same base features, but AP is the most recent one and, as such, the one with the least bugs and the most additional features added. Regardless, they're big games, and not particularly focused. They are more based on the idea of letting the player do as they please. Sure there's an ongoing story in each game, but it's entirely optional and is probably more of an overall gameplay tutorial than the meat of the game in itself. I've never actually completed any of the story plots in any of the games; I get too distracted by all the other things I want to do. Do I like the games? Absolutely. I definitely recommend them. But they're damn complex to start learning at the start, even without considering modding. And you're going to want to mod your game eventually. Vanilla X3 is barebones compared to the features available with mods. That's why, if you've never played a space sim, I recommend a more focused game to start with, like Freespace, which is just a mission-based combat game. But nothing's stopping you from jumping into X3. It's hard to really get more specific about the game and what you might like or dislike about it without knowing what you're looking for in a game. What your expectations are. How willing you are to learn as you go. Things like that. But ask me anything about the X3 games if you want! I'll answer as best I can.

This was one of the bigger game showings for me this year. Done right, it could be an absolutely wonderful experience. I wonder how they're going to handle the urban ruins areas, though. Most of the aesthetic in the video was centered around this cross of technology and nature in more natural lands. That won't remain the same for the ruins. Not that that's bad thing, it could be great, but if we're expected to spend time in both, the meshing of the two needs to be done carefully. But from what I've seen so far, I'm optimistic.