When I went into Procaster studio, the recording was split into like 20 videos that varied between 1 to 20mins.
What the heck?
So now I'm uploading the master copy from my PC. I'm just glad it records in both the Livestream server and my computer.
Just watched 1911.
Realized that one unspoken important aspect of such a major revolution was that it also clears the debts of the previous government.
Well, most of it anyway. Britain still held Hong Kong, Portugal Macao and Shanghai remained kinda like a pizza split among everyone after the revolution.
Another thing I thought was that it would be nice to have a war movie that portrays both sides of the story.
Most movies are about the winning side. The people on this side are usually portrayed as heroes and the other side is full of dumb fucks.
That's not true.
If say, someone makes a movie about Napoleon's wars, he'd be the hero most of the time until Waterloo.
But Napoleon I was an ass from the start when he twisted the French Revolution for his personal ambitions. He betrayed his entire nation and was basically just like Yuan Shikai. In fact I thought Napoleon's story showed what China would have been if Yuan Shikai had managed to hold on to power.
Or maybe Stalin would have been a better example, since the weak military of China combined with its terrible political situation in those years would never have allowed Yuan Shikai to invade neighbouring countries successfully.
So as I was saying, the movie might have been more realistic if it could show more of what the Qing supporters were doing. Surely there was some good men among them, people who were as idealistic as Sun Yat-sen except they believed they could change the government from the inside and did all they could.
Just as there were assholes like Yuan Shikai on the Revolutionaries' side, I'm certain not all the high-ranking Qing officials were greedy bootlickers; people are never as uniformly conforming as that.
However, doing so would have changed the focus of the film from celebrating and commemorating the revolution to being anti-war.
For some reason, my modem died this morning. The LED light for internet access went red on my gateway device (the technician described it as "a modem and router combined") and it's been like this since.
Restarting it doesn't work at all and the tech support hotline didn't know what to do either.
I'm now on my USB modem whose router is being recharged constantly by my PC so it gives me internet access but with crappy 3G bandwidth.
...
Okay it resurrected the following day. All is well again.
I;ve just spent US$5 on this RPG called "Unemployment Quest".
WHAT HAVE I DONE??!
It's just a 2D RPG a la classic JRPGs about... unemployment.
I'm not spending anymore at this site from now on until I see something really good. This was a really hasty decision.
I've also backed Legends of Eisenwald with US$15 but that's a turn-based tactical RPG which I feel the PC platform sorely lacks these days.
On the other hand, it's US$15. I paid less for Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3.
Still, it's an indie developer with a good idea.
The last project I'm backing is Kitaru, which may or may not succeed. Most likely will, but who knows?
It's hit 72% of its funding goal with 14 days to go, so I'm not sure if it will succeed. Likely but nothing is certain.
It's also a RPG, albeit turn-based active time (think FF franchise) but the important thing here is that it's going to be on both the PC and iOS.
My iPad is like the PS3 right now - no gaems.
There's actually just one interesting game at the moment called "Castle Master 3D" which is a strategy game and action RPG combined.
Since it's a mobile app, the aspects of both genres have been greatly simplified from what it can be on the PC.
Since this game is about you saving the almost extinct humans from the monster invasion, the strategy comes in the form of retaking the castles which have been uniformly spread across the land.
You can only attack monster-controlled castles that are next to your own castle, and you begin with just one right at the southwestern corner in a rectangular map.
Castles generate income and train soldiers. Money is placed into a unified treasury but soldiers are garrisoned into the castles they were trained in. They can then be transferred manually and this process takes time, money and control points.
Control points can be recharged for free to max capacity of 150 points daily. More can be bought with real cash.
To provide a sense of scale, each invasion you attempt costs 5 points and each transfer, regardless of number of soldiers, cost 2 points.
Money is earned by the automatic tax collection that happens regularly (not sure how long). The amount is affected by your Intelligence, the number of citizens and their loyalty.
The number of citizens are gained gradually, usually through good random events and are limited only by level of the castle (there are three). Their loyalty decays gradually from a maximum of 120, although it can be raised by spending money or by good random events. There are bad random events that decrease both.
And that's that for the big picture.
Zooming in to the warfare, we have five kinds of soldiers: spearmen, scouts, warriors, gladiators and knights, arranged according to cost.
By the way there are no guides or wikis on this game, so everything here is either from the ingame tips or my own observations.
Anyways, spearmen are the most useless. They are multiple times as tanky as scouts but they do shit all damage.
Scouts, vice versa.
Warriors have the second best damage in the game and they're about twice as tough as scouts so they're the real damage dealers when money is not the issue.
Gladiators have insane HP compared to everyone else, or twice as tough as knights, so they appear to be the real tanks... except they do area damage with the whirlwind-like skill they use with their axes. So I'm thinking they're not tanks but damage dealers specialising in AoE damage.
Knights have the highest damage and second most HP in the game.
What I know for sure is that in desperate times, gladiators and knights are my best friends. Seriously, during the few times when everyone in my army is dead, only these two types of soldiers remain to help me defend my castles.
These guys actually last; everyone else is just support. With them around, I've won defensive battles against 150 enemies with just 60... and lost 10.
Furthermore, each type of soldiers can be individually upgraded. Each upgrade cost money and takes time and will apply to all soldiers of the type across the map.
Now to the micro scale, the RPG. As I have mentioned previously, you have Intelligence. Other than that, you have Strength and Constitution. Strength increases damage, Constitution increases HP and Intelligence increases the damage of your special skills and the taxes you collect.
Weapons come in three types - shield-and-sword, dual-wield shortswords (or daggers, whatever) and broadsword.
The first increases your toughness, have average movement speed and the first special skill is basically shield bash - cheap MP cost, quick recharge, does crap damage and pushes the target back.
The second gives you more damage, a fast movement speed and the first skill is just more damage with average cost and recharge speed.
The third has the most damage, slow movement speed and the first skill does AoE damage with high cost and slow recharge.
I'm only discussing the first skills because that's how far I've gotten.
Weapons and armours are all readily available at the shops but other than the prices, they have level requirements, forcing you to buy one set at a time every few levels.
The problem is, it's not completely necessary.
With high Int, I can raise more taxes, train better and more soldiers and just watch my men fight. Although they can't be controlled, when there are even 50 soldiers, micromanagement kinda becomes obsolete anyway unless you're Korean. Coincidentally, that's where the game's made. I guess the devs were kind enough to level the playing field for the international players.
Of course, the other way is by brute force and become a force of nature with high strength and/or constitution, therefore rendering your troops pointless.
Actually I'm not sure if this path is possible because you would have to kill really fast. Otherwise, enemies further from you may just ignore you and attack the castle gates which you have to defend.
In my first try I went for this path and lost because I lost everything but my first castle.
Right now I'm typing this because I just lost one fully upgraded castle due to my carelessness.
Which brings us to the point that this game is as hardcore as classic games.
It shows no mercy. If I accidentally let myself die by not watching my HP bar, my army automatically loses even if it vastly outnumbers the enemies.
So if I'm defending, the castle just get lost to enemy hands. Worse, it loses all its upgrades, so that even if I retake it I have to rebuild it from scratch.
Retaking is easy if I retaliate immediately before the AI has time to dig in (bring reinforcements, upgrade defenses), hence I keep large garrisons in every castle just in case.
Fortunately, I don't have to stay inactive like in Mount & Blade in which I'd be held as a POW for ransom, so I can act quick.
Speaking of defense upgrades, there is almost none, just a tougher gate and some damaging spikes near it.
Finally there is the time.
The game does not progress when it's closed like other games because time is an important aspect of the game.
Everything is in real-time, so enemies can invade at any moment. This can get particularly irritating when you have only a skeleton force in a castle because the AI would keep throwing everything it has against you thinking it had any chance of succeeding against my army of 30 gladiators and knights with its army of 100. At one point I barely had time to restock my potions before the next invasion countdown ended.
Of course I have to get in the fray myself. The game would be so boring if I just watch, although I risk exactly what happened to me just now when I fight. Moreover, with my army so badly outnumbered, I had to do everything I can to stop my soldiers from dying.
But usually, the AI only attacks once in a while, especially once I have a sufficiently large garrison in each castle.
As for the very beginning, I start with a small army and one castle and the enemy has never attacked me at all until I invade any of its castle.
Anyways, it's getting too annoying due to my carelessness. Also, can't reload because it's always autosave.
So the Trappist (a Roman Catholic Order) monastery in Hong Kong known as the "Trappist Haven Monastery" produces and sells milk, and it's called... "Priest Milk". It practically blew my mind with the amount of sense it made.
Actually it would be more accurate and less hilarious to call it "Priest brand milk". And maybe less "English" too.
Diablo 3 is encountering a major security issue - what security?
A quick glance online shows multiple reports of Diablo 3 accounts being hacked, suggesting it is a growing issue. Players have seen the loss of items stored in character inventory and stash, and gold removed as their accounts are stripped bare. Blizzard has been working to "roll back" affected characters to a point before accounts were compromised, but some progress is lost.
This is pretty epic. Nobody really knows how they're doing it and Blizzard isn't saying anything. It's kinda like the start of most zombie flicks, before people realize they have to shoot them in the head.
Nobody knows how to prevent it. The current popular theory is that the hackers were hijacking session identifiers, a sort of temporary key that allows data exchange between the user and the server.
Official Blizzard advice isn't working either.
Blizzard offers an Authenticator designed to provide extra security to your account. Donlan did not have the authenticator before the hack, but reports suggest accounts have been compromised even with this enabled.
This is really bad. The authenticator is similar to those used by banks in that it provides a temporary code through a mobile device to be used to log in.
For local banks in Singapore, this is an almost obsolete technology in the form of the tiny device that shows a code based on an insanely complex time-related algorithm. Nowadays, the better banks like DBS use codes that are sent via instant messaging to our phones for online card transactions. Heck, even Google uses that (for this Blogger account, for example, I have to enter a code they send me every time I log in).
One bank I know that still uses only the authentication device is the Singapore branch of the Bank of China, although its internet banking is completely useless TBH so the security is pointless anyway. Even if someone steals my account, there isn't anything they can do with it. You can only transfer funds between accounts you own, and I only own a single account.
So in any case, if you own a legit copy of D3, it's probably for the best if you stop playing for a while until Blizzard fixes this.
In this video, the people moving around were hacked characters stripping and selling everything for gold in preparation for the release of the AH in the near future.
If you lose anything, there's no guarantee you're getting them back.
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