csuzw

I recently started watch this and have just caught up (well not watched 3x13 yet). Not entirely sure why I like it as Jim Cavaziel is awful in it. About half way through season 1 he just seemed to give up and now just blankly stares at everyone while occasionally whispering rubbish. It's a Steven Seagal performance without the so-bad-its-good-ness.

I'm the same, would like to see Broncos v Seahawks but pretty sure it'll be 49ers v Pats and at that point I just don't care who wins.

Daggers do exist as I crafted a few. I'm not sure if there is any difference (other than cosmetic) between different 1 handed weapons though other than perhaps speed?

I found it really dull. I didn't see anything particularly new in it and combat felt really unresponsive and a bit rubbish. Was quite impressed by the fact there were no queues or really noticeable lag though.

Got into the stress test too. Given the number of people I know that got keys for this I'm guessing there will be very little actual playing and a lot of staring at ridiculously long queue screens and disconnects.

Just realised all play-off games and the super bowl are blacked out in the UK on GamePass. Pretty shit, but I guess I should have read the small print. Hoping either the Bengals or Chargers win, pretty annoying that 1 of them has to go out straight away. Failing that hope the Broncos win with Manning break every record ever.

Yes, I ended up rolling my own using DataAnnotations and reflection. I was (and still am) surprised there aren't more already built solutions for the issue though.

Dual classing is mostly for min-maxing power-gamers. The character you're dual classing has to be human and has to have enough points in certain stats to be able to dual class in the first place (something like 15 for primary stat and 13 for secondary stat of class you're dualing too, and it might be even stricter than that). It's the only way to have a kit and multiple classes (unless you're a gnome). The big problem with dual-classing is that when you switch, you lose all abilities from your 1st class until you've got your 2nd class to 1 level higher than it. So if you dual from rogue at level 6 to warrior, you wouldn't get your rogue skills back until you got warrior to level 7. If you're only play BG then dualing makes very little sense as you're unlikely to spend much of the game getting the benefit of both classes. With BG2 that changes as the level cap is so much higher. Certain combinations of classes can be ridiculously overpowered in this way because the benefits of 1 class makes up for the weakness of another (eg Use Any Item from rogue allows some warrior kits to wear magic items/weapons they would otherwise be restricted from using), or because 1 class stops scaling relatively early so you end up with the best of 2 classes.

Sure and completely agreed, every update they bring out, just makes me more excited about the game. I'm trying not too read/watch to much now because however good they make it, I think my expectations are going to start to outpace any realistic end product soon if they haven't already.

Great post. If inXile had just said that right at the start I'd have been happy with it and would probably have backed them anyway (not close to as much as I did though!). The majority of my annoyance is how the decision was handled, or that fact it was presented as a choice at all, not the result. Anything else is just irritation at all the terrible arguments for TB that show up in these debates. Subjective or implementation reasons I can understand but I have yet to hear an argument for TB over RTwP related to mechanics that makes sense to me.

It went to vote but that's irrelevant for 2 reasons. Firstly my main issue was with how it was presented during the funding period and the vote was well after that. Secondly as they themselves said the vote was a draw and so they went with their own judgement. Even prior to the vote they said it wasn't binding and they'd use their own judgement. The only way RTwP stood a chance was if it won by a landslide. Also what makes TB encounters inherently more "focussed" or better "designed" than RTwP? These are the kind of wishy-washy terms that keep getting thrown around. And I'm saying this as someone who has backed Shadowrun Returns (enjoyed it), Wasteland 2 and Banner Saga so I'm not against TB at all. There are good reasons for TB but I've yet to see 1 that isn't related to implementation rather than end result. edit: sorry I've taken this way off topic, as I said in my 1st comment on the topic, I might still be bitter about the whole thing!

My problem with TB combat decision in Torment is that I feel they'd made their decision from the start but they left it open to increase funding. Even if combat isn't the most important part of Torment, this was 1 of the bigger, if not the biggest, change they were intending to make from the original format and it should have been much more prominent in their KS campaign from day 1. Instead it felt like it was revealed relatively late and in fact I didn't even find out about it until funding had finished. The reasons they've given for choosing TB are wishy-washy "it fits better" and that might be the case but they knew what rules system they were using from the start, so why even put it up for discussion. It all feels really dishonest to me, even if their decision was ultimately the correct 1 for the game.

Yup, I really think this might actually have a chance of living up to my expectations. Agree with RubberJohnny on Torment, I'm still feeling bitter about the combat decision.

Yep, been an amazing series of games so far, especially the Ravens/Vikings game. I love the fact that still play in ridiculous weather like the Lions/Eagles game. The cherry on the top is my fantasy team pretty much winning this week already with all but 1 of my players still got half a game to go and pretty sure it means I can't be caught at the top of my league.

I'm writing a WCF service and I'd like to be able to validate the input parameters and objects. As far as I can see there is no in-built mechanism for doing this. After a bit of searching the only decent existing solution I could find was a package called WCFDataAnnotations that validates using existing System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations attributes and interfaces. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get it to work properly yet despite it's simplicity. It might be something to do with our slightly involved service layer architecture or it might be something to do with there being no activity on the project for 2 years. However given this seems like a very common requirement, I'm surprised there isn't more activity, discussions and solutions out there. Has anyone else come across any other good approaches to validation in WCF services?

I'm still not completely convinced by Seattle's passing game. It's improved in recent games and with Harvin back it might all change but it's been really poor at times. Of course Lynch and that defense will always keep them in it but they need to keep improving if they're going to do well in the playoffs. Was impressed by Matt McGloin for the Raiders. Seems like a lot of backups have come in this season and done pretty well all things considered.

The competition I mentioned 5 months ago finally finished. I took part for the 1st few weeks and didn't even get close to competing with the best solutions for most of the challenges I took part in. Then I went on holiday and by the time I got back I was too far behind, also the problems were ridiculous. Here's the final round solutions and commentary: Also someone wrote a guide detailing all the quirks and glitches you can take advantage of to improve your solutions. The waldo/bonder/molecule priority stuff comes in handy quite often, the rest are pretty ridiculous and really feel like cheating. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=172586188

Huge patch just been released for this (unless you bought via Steam in which case you have to wait for Atari to get round to it). Looks like lots of bug fixes, some balancing, some major UI improvements and additional modding support. It's been in public beta for ages so hopefully it hasn't introduced loads of new bugs.

The flags thing is because they were the "home" team. Similarly everyone got a Vikings flag at the other Wembley game (and they similarly seemed to mostly end up on the floor due to the majority of people seeming to be Steelers fans).

It's not normally something that bothers me much but the amount of tech drivel in this drives me mad: "I defragmented the bitstream for optimal tubal byte alignment in the TCP."

Pretty much agree, although as terrible as Sabetha is, she's still significantly better than Denna in Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicels.

The Golden Key by Rawn, Roberson and Elliott. 1 of my favourite fantasy books although finding it might be difficult. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. David Gemmell has written quite a few stand alone books. The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney. 1st part of a trilogy but as far as I remember it worked completely fine on it's own and it's the best part by far. Any of Joe Abercrombie's books after the 1st trilogy. They're all set in the same world but you don't need any prior knowledge for them (or at least I never remember anything from the previous books by the time a new one comes out). Trying to think of recommendations for this made me realise how few stand-alone books I read.

Yes, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. I got the feeling Abraham did most of the writing and Franck was more of a sciencey guy but I don't know where I got that from and I'm probably completely wrong.

I really enjoyed Leviathan Wakes and am now reading Caliban's War too. I really like the fantasy books he writes under his real name too (Daniel Abraham).

I went to Wembley and saw an NFL match on Sunday for the 1st time. Really enjoyed it, although I didn't actually watch that much of it. Ended up sitting next to a Swedish guy who looked like an actual viking, and we ended up chatting about football (American and otherwise), politics and snus for most of the match. Glad I went but think I prefer vegging out in front of redzone at home than the live experience!