nikki.

A pretty light summer for me. In chronological order, I've read: Helen Edmundson - The Heresy of Love Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita Edgar Allen Poe - 'The Purloined Letter' John Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London Charlotte Perkins Gilman - 'The Yellow Wallpaper' Simon Armitage - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Tom Holt - Expecting Someone Taller John Williams - Stoner John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men Of those, five were re-reads though, so my number is alarmingly low.

I'm working my way through Parks and Recreation because somebody mentioned I reminded them of April. It was accurate. It's an alright show, and it beats doing dumb things like reading or eating or playing computer games. I'm also watching Batman: The Animated Series, which is the greatest cartoon of all time. edit: except maybe A:TLA and Cardcaptor Sakura

1. What is your age? (Be approximate, if you'd like) I'm 26 and change. 2. What part of the world do you live in? In which part of the world were you born? What countries have you lived in? I live roughly in the middle of England. I've only ever lived roughly in the middle of England. 3. What is your native language? In what languages are you proficient? I speak English, and can swear in about half a dozen other languages. I don't do that often enough to say I'm proficient at it. 4. Describe your ancestry. English and Welsh. 5. Describe your gender identity and sexual orientation. I think the problems started when I got lumped with the name 'Nikki'. 6. Do you have any religious or spiritual beliefs? If so, describe them. In what religious tradition(s) were you raised, if any? We weren't raised to be religious, and I continue to be atheistic. This was more due to laziness/apathy on my parents part, rather than with atheist stances - I actually think my mother is Christian. 7. What is your relationship status? Do you have any children? Single-ish. No kids. 8. Describe your social class. Have you always been in this class? Working class. I think probably we used to be below that but I don't know. "Poor (relatively)" seems a fair way to describe it. 9. Have you ever served in the military? If so, what division? Nope. 10. What is your occupation (or former occupation)? What is your highest level of education (and your degree, if applicable)? Currently, I continue to waste my time, and my mind, in retail. This spring, I achieved a BA in English. Hopefully, with that degree, I'll be able to persuade somebody I can write, and that they should pay me to do so.

As Ernie has implied, this topic was way dead a few days ago. Can we all just let it return to its (hopefully) eternal slumber? If anybody wants to start a new discussion about gender/identity, then, of course, feel free to. Just let this old-timer pass on. Cheers!

I don't think I ever used a recall crystal in ANY of my many games (both Nethergate and Avernum). They might be cool, but they're really not an essential item by any means.

Okay. I voted 'Singleplayer'; 'Story' and 'Game Mechanics/Gameplay', 'Yes' and 'No'. I picked the latter two options because I felt those questions were kind of... weak. There are more types of games than those you listed in #3, whilst the answer to #4 is half mechanicy/gameplay-y, and half plot, so it was unclear what you were really asking.

You could use the editor to reset towns if you really wanted to finish the quest... Alternatively, you can just forget the quest. I think you're punished for failing a quest by not being allowed to take another for a number of days, but I'm not sure on the hard numbers. Might be worth it, since money isn't really an issue in A3 anyway.

Things I learnt at CalRef #334: If Dinti can't find weird pictures of it, it doesn't exist.

The Windows version didn't cause my computer to explode, so that's good. Y'all should be fine with the others. This was neat, though I managed to go up a tunnel and then fell out of the planet, so that was fun. Otherwise, Yeah. 'neat'. Good job - I'll definitely play again when you add more stuff.

Hey, Synergy! Thanks for doing that! And welcome back?

Yep. And talented people can make awesome things with MSPaint. Enraged Slith used paint for all of his BoA graphics, and they are all excellent, see?

Sorry, when I said 'going to the locations', I meant in-game. Seems that's the only way you'll actually know what is there.

Yeah. If you'd taken a couple of minutes to search this forum for 'Easter Eggs', you'd have found loads of posts about this. In this thread, for example, you can find what the message is for the first location, and general information about what the Easter Egg is. Going a little further down the page of search results gives us this post, in which Jeff is quoted as saying exactly what the Easter Egg is. Of course, those posts only discuss N:O, but since Jeff is quoted as saying the Easter Egg would remain if he ever reworked the game. I imagine what you have 'found' is just this. And, if that's the case, Romans can certainly find this egg too. (of course, if you have found something new, that's awesome. but actually going to the spots you've discovered in the scripts, and finding out what is there would be much better than just a snippet of some text log. just sayin')

The Second Avernum Trilogy is 75% off over on Steam right now, and will remain so for the rest of the week. Hopefully you didn't spend all of your money in the recent summer sale.

Posting it here is fine, sure. As Jerakeen said, you might also want to email it to Jeff. I'm sure he'd like to see it!

My post was made in response to the first version of SoT's post, as I pointed out in my edit. His revised post is different enough that it makes me look like I just plain didn't read half of what was said, and my post seems unfair and harsh as a result. Sorry!

aaaaaaaaaaah! *headdesk* Please. Please stop using the phrase 'an education in [x] appreciation' to refer to the study of a field you consider inferior, substandard, or less academically rigorous. Just stop. I, personally, find it incredibly insulting that you continue to use this language. I worked hard to earn my degree and having it compared to 'star appreciation' (an improvement on the last comparison, I must admit) just leads me to the opinion that you really don't have any idea what studying a B.A, in the humanities actually entails. If that's the case, then please take a moment to educate yourself. You'll find Kelandon, Alorael, and myself all spoke about this the last time this issue reared its head. That said, I fear, as I increasingly do when addressing you, that I'm speaking to a brick wall; as Slarty notes, you're set in your belief that the sciences are better than the humanities, and I'm not sure that anybody here will be able to convince you of the merits of the latter. We have certainly failed before. Edit: Blah. Either I am very poor at reading, or you added some things in there after I posted. Anyway, now my post feels a little harsh, but I'm gonna leave it as it is.

Isn't there text in one of the games that actually says this is what happened? It was built on a hill for defensive purposes and then got overrun. Pretty sure it trades hands a lot over the course of the series.

Yeah, I always, in any playthrough of Nethergate, complete every other sidequest before I head to Goagh-Nar. I used to think it was me being a completionist, and having all of the Sylak keys, and blah blah blah, but I think it might just be the way I play games. I just finished Skyrim a couple of weeks ago, for example, and I completed pretty much every side/faction quest before doing any of the 'main' questline.

Huh. Looking at that post, I see I already fixed the links a while ago. The first one is an internal link to somewhere on this site, and it still works. Unfortunately, the other two links point to files that were being hosted on photobucket, files I guess no longer exist? The links themselves are actually fine, they just no longer point to anything. Sorry.

And hey, you were/are smart enough not to do a humanities degree, so at the very least you've got that going for you! somebody please give me a job

I think is relevant.

A new SSD will make booting a breeze - I go from powering on to the desktop in under 10 seconds (and that's with entering a password). It'll make opening programs snappier, and will cut down loading times in your games. They're a great purchase. A new SSD, however, will not let give you an increase in the FPS you get from games. I'm afraid that Sy is right. With that graphics chip, you're gonna have a hard time playing anything pretty at anything approaching 30fps. It's time to start saving for a desktop machine. Don't worry though - if you're smart, you can build a next-gen gaming machine for around the price of an XBOne or a PS4.

Haha, excellent catch! ...now I want to rewatch Black Books.