Wild Card Wednesdays!

    My day is going swell, and I thought it would be a good idea to mention a game I've looked into recently. I found this game on the steam summer sale, but decided not to buy it. However, it still looks promising; I found it too early in development to consider buying. Like so many other games it's following the "Minecraft Formula". Selling in Alpha to fund development. It's just good marketing.

The game I am talking about is Kenshi. It's and open ended, squad-based RPG with an Asian theme. The open endlessness comes from the sandbox aspect of the game. There is a crafting system and base building implemented. The Sandy desert world that it takes place on is reminiscent of Tatooine. All in all, promising, but not quite at a point where I want to buy it.

If you are interested check it out. For some reason the prices vary depending on where you buy it, $15.99 on Steam and Desura, but only $13.99 from the home site (The key bought is activated through Steam...)







So here is hoping for some cool action later on in Kenshi development. --Dascoe

TECH Tuesday!

     For the first TECH Tuesday I decided to post my current set up that I game and edit on. I had a gaming desktop built in 2008, but it was too big to take on my move to Winnipeg. I had spent two years with out a desktop in Winnipeg, but eventually I found a good deal off a classified add for a cheap second-hand rig. After a couple of cheap upgrades I now have a fantastic rig that meets my every need. Most of the components are old, but they work and I am very happy and proud of this rig.

Case: Cooler Master CM690 II 

Power Supply: Corsair 600x 600w

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W

Mother Board: ABIT IP35 Pro

RAM: 8 gigs of G.SKILL 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) Dual Channel Kit

This RAM has some great timing. I just bought another kit recently. The only down fall is the 2.1 volts is eats

Video Card: Radeon 4870 1gb (Power Cooler)

When I first bought the rig it came with a Nvidia 8800 GTS (G92), 512mb. It was a good card, but again it was old. This was another cheap second hand upgrade that I snagged off of classified adds. It's been fantastic and was a 50% FPS boost! (that equalled about 20-30 more frames per second in most games I play).

I won't bore you with hard drive details: I have 3 drives, 250gb Western Digital Black C-Drive, 500gb Western Digital Blue storage X drive, and a 500gb Seagate Barracuda drive for games!

I plan to upgrade the C-drive to a newer HDD or an SSD if I find yet another cheap deal in the classifieds! 

This is my baby, and I love it. Comments welcome. I am hoping that these Tech Tuesdays will spur on some debates and opinions.

Cheers! -- Dascoe

The harvest is on!

     Rainy day here in the Falls. I started the morning off right; a few good hours in smithing before Thor decided to show up and dowse the area with thunder and rain! But no matter! Today is a good day rain or no rain , 

    

     A rainy day calls for nothing more than good time spent playing Harvest Moon! I had forgotten about this game, and only remembered it after finding it in a box of belongings the other day. Upon finding it I had the urge to fire (EDIT: I hope he doesn't mean burn it!) up the old farm and milk some cows; so I started a new game! By the time the first winter of the game was on it's way all was going well. Presently I own 2 cows, 1 horse, 1 sheep, and 2 chickens.

   

       I make a good amount of  the money off the fish I catch in the river, but also collect every herb and flower to sell to the travelling sales man Van (EDIT: Big Bad Daddy Van!). A lot of the fish seem to catch a fair price. I have discovered the best fishing area seems to be at the waterfall, directly under it as a matter of fact. Yesterday after waiting with my  trusty fishing rod for one (harvest moon) hour I managed to catch a Big Yamame! They run for 1000 gold when sold to Van! Fishing by the water fall is a good way to stay away from the cheaper priced fish. Here is the list of the types of fish:  Happy Tyr Day All! 

There are 16 types of fish. Here is the list of them and their prices.

Ama(Arna)       400g  Big Ama(Arna)        800g

Colombo          20g      Big colombo           40g

Huchep           90g  Big Huchep           170g

Nyamame          60g  Big Nyamame          130g

Snelt            30g  Big Snelt            160g

Rainbob          80g  Big Rainbob          800g

Sharshark       600g  Big Sharshark       1200g

Yamame          500g  Big Yamame          1000g

Huchen(Huchep)   90g            Big Huchen(Huchep)   170g

Noble Steads

       Well, due to the fine hot weather that presented itself today I once again returned to the forge. The project for today was to make more of my "Horse Head Bottle Openers", one of my first small level smithing builds. The plan is to generate in interest/demand in my art before I move on to bigger things, and in my opinion, more fun things.

  I enjoy making these, for both the practice and the general useful nature of them. The bottle openers had started off as an experiment with scrap metal (1/4" by 1/2" flat bar). After some simple hammer blows and a lot of heat I ended up with the design you see in the picture.

                                        >Raldorix.