In a covered saucepan on high heat:

• 2 quarts water
• one stick butter or margarine
• 2 cups celery, chopped
  
• one large onion, chopped

While that cooks, skin and chop 6 medium potatoes into approximately one-inch cubes.

When celery/onion are tender, add potatoes (and more water if low). Cover the pan again.

Once potatoes have softened up (squeezable but not squishy!), add milk until creamy.  Let sit uncovered for a few minutes to thicken.

(Posting this for future recollection.)

I was politely informed that STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl was made available on Steam for the extremely reasonable price of only $4.99 recently. I of course jumped on it, because for the longest time I never actually owned the game; I was playing it via a friend’s account. This was months ago, of course, and he since read the new EULA for Steam and decided it would be best if we just stuck to our own accounts for a while.

STALKER remained installed, but unplayed, for three months. Now that I had it for my own, I could pick up where I left off.

I recorded a little video earlier, proving to a fellow Fortress Forever forum member that killing people from a distance was far from impossible (and that I don’t know when to stop recording).

You can view it here: http://www.wegame.com/watch/Stalker_Gunplay_at_the_Carpark/

(awesome² x √legendary)³ ≈ How I Met Your Mother

Or, in English,

“Take awesome, multiply it by awesome, then cube that with the square root of legendary, and you get kinda close to it.”

This math lesson brought to you by Lynn, who is apparently something of a fan of the series.

Almost ironically, the third game released by developer Troika (comprised of Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson of Interplay’s Fallout team) was their last.

Is that irony? I’m actually not even sure. Troika is Russian for “three of any kind,” apparently. The name was chosen for the three members that formed it, but it also ends up representing their entire body of work - specifically Arcanum, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and VtM.

Irony, meanwhile, means “the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning,” so no it isn’t ironic in the slightest.

It is, in fact, antironic, a word I just made up.

Well, no Google says a couple smartasses use it as a screen name, but that doesn’t count. Fuck them.

Where the hell.. oh, yes, Vampire.

So, a long while back, I had borrowed this game from a friend, Josh, and I end up unable to play it. I get this error concerning the game’s Launcher DLL. I scour the net and no one else has ever had this problem. I post to one of the premire VtMB message boards and am met with blank stares until finally the topic is inexplicably locked.

Fast forward to today, I’ve recently reacquired the game and have just installed it. Behold! It functions perfectly. In the interim, I’ve reformatted my computer, installed countless new drivers, programs, etc., yet I have no idea what actually caused the error in the first place.

Now it would seem another has been afflicted by the error, and despite potentially being the only other person to have ever had this issue I had no help to offer them.

Le sigh.

Anyway, game works, gonna go play it now.

Y’ever go a long time without playing a game, then come back and suddenly remember everything you loved about it?

Just me then?

I spent hours upon hours getting Daggerfall to run properly in Windows XP. It took three extra programs and a whole lot of patience, but I finally got it running smoothly.

Unfortunately, the smoothness didn’t prevent enemies and quest items from spawning in the fucking ceiling.

Downloaded DOSBox, ten minutes later Daggerfall was running smooth as butter, enemies spawned where they were meant to, and all was right with the world.

As an added bonus, DOSBox can record video. I’ll put some generic gameplay stuff up on YouTube eventually. Maybe run a few easy quests, as a demonstration.

Ooh, or do a video tutorial to help newbs escape Privateer’s Hold. Yes. Awesome.

Mini-Nuke Nerf at Fallout 3 Nexus

A slightly goofier mod than my other contribution to Fallout 3. It’s nothing more than a retexture of the Fat Man’s Mini-Nuke, but it’s pretty funny to me.

Actually this texture is 16x bigger than the default - fortunately most of it is flat color. Without the extra resolution, though, the logo looks like crap.

It gave me some handy experience in retextures and normal mapping, though, so that’s gotta count for something.

Level Cap Increaser at Fallout 3 Nexus

A mod I made a while back for Fallout 3, before the release of the GECK.

The original version simply increased the level cap allowed by the game (to 30 or 40, depending on your preference).

Unfortunately, the game didn’t want you to be over level 20. Oh, sure, it tracked experience beyond level 20, and hell, future DLC will increase the level cap anyway - but that doesn’t matter, because right now if you’re over level 20, a few bad things happen:

• You lose your Karmic Title. Because of this,
• Three-Dog no longer talks about you. And what’s more,
• if you’re Evil, the game crashes.

The newer version, released yesterday, actually works around the problems presented by the previous version, by intentionally resetting your level to 20 every time you level up.

So, when you hit level 21, you assign your skill points, pick a Perk, and the script kicks in and sets you back to 20 before the game checks anything related to your level - preventing crashes.

There are two versions. One just works, problem solved. The other goes a step further, determining your “real” level and adjusting your HP total to match. Unfortunately, one of the checks related to your level is your new HP total, so without the extra scripting you never gain any more.

For the curious, here’s what the script looks like:

scn bounceback

Begin MenuMode

if player.getlevel >= 21

if bbRealLevelSet != 1
Set bbRealLevelSet to 1
Set bbRealLevel to Player.GetLevel
else
Set bbRealLevel to (bbRealLevel + 1)
endif

player.SetLevel 20

;determine and modify HP
short hpEndurance
short hpLevel
short modLevel
short realHealth

Set hpEndurance to ((Player.GetAV Endurance) * 20)
Set modLevel to (bbRealLevel - 1)
Set hpLevel to (modLevel * 10)
Set realHealth to (100 + hpEndurance + hpLevel)

Player.SetAV health realHealth
endif

End

;props to teddybearman for this workaround idea and initial scripting

bbRealLevel and bbRealLevelSet are global variables that track your real level, and whether or not the script has been run before.

So far it works great, even on existing saved games that crash on load. It should tie us over until we can figure out what assigns karmic title and causes Evil characters to crash.

So this LithianLord guy over at the Fallout 3 Nexus forums thought it’d be cool to expand upon the radio stations being made since the release of the GECK and do a call-in/variety show. Support grew quickly, and the idea’s grown a fair bit.

The question was posed to would-be listeners, what do you think life was like before the war?

Despite my recording equipment consisting of a $10 headset I picked up from Wal-Mart and my audio editing knowledge not extending beyond loading up Audacity, I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring and give a response.

So, here’s one Ghoul’s opinion. (mp3, 0:38)

Why Jazz musicians?

Code is not poetry, you stupid chumps.