Bay 12 Games Forum

I bought my Asus for $800 second hand about two years ago. It works pretty damn well and has probably over heated only half a dozen times during the much warmer months here (average of 92f or 33c for the rest of world, no AC, I use a $20 heatpad and cheap external fan).

Admittedly while I consider myself computer literate. I.e. people come to me for advice on the first things they don't understand; I haven't tried anything regarding hardware modifications or bios. I've only read about this stuff and I'm now finding myself interested in giving it a try!

Anyway it's going to be with me for a little while longer so I figured I get all of my monies worth from it. I'm trying to work within a budget of $600 and don't mind losing anything saved to my laptop. I already know about many of the limitations of using laptops so I know that upgrading any of the hardware components is impossible or just impratical (especially the GPU but that's what desktops are for!).

My questions
-I like keeping the insides of my laptop relatively clean. Is there's a better way to clean out the insides than just blowing a duster can into the fans? I've tried to remove the casing but to really get inside I'd have to rip my keyboard off. Are there any case mods that make this easier?

-I plan on re pasting as much as my laptop as practical. My first problem is I have no experience with this, so I'll probably just pay someone for the labor or is it much easier to do than I think? Also what thermal paste is recommended?

-I plan on upgrading the bios since I'm doing this I also wondering if I should work on updating to windows 8. Does anyone know if it's worth it to do so? Or should I just stick to Windows 7?

-Occasionally ever since I was able to update my graphics drivers to play Bioshock Infinite I've noticed more and more that my GPU (ATI HD 5870) would crash more and more often with games set 1080P. 720P worked perfectly fine but that's no way to play games. With less demanding games at 1080p my GPU just goes to a broken gray screen and eventually restores the image. Is this just a heat issue or early signs of overheating?

. . .

I'M NOT!

DEAD YET!

Hi all you people. Remember me? Yes, no, doesn't matter. In case you're wondering why I was gone for so long (if you care), my computer has recently taken to going through hard drives like cheap crack. Meaning that any data for any game topics and such on my old hard drive have been completely lost forever.

Course, that would be the case if I didn't have an awesome USB. Though, to be honest, I never really updated it all of the time, but there's a good amount of data there.

Anyway, I'm just making this topic to help me organize my own actions on this forum. I.e., any mods or game topics that I've never completed. I'm also going to have you guys (if you care) help me to decide on which projects I should try to focus on more.

THE LIST!
Old ass Goblin Fortress mod! (Circa 40d)
What: An old mod for the 40d, this is my first "full" mod. It was a great experience creating this, and ever since I've wanted to update this mod. I've been doing a decent deal of modding with the new version, and have been wanting to release a mod for the new version in this same light.
Difficulty: High-Very High, it took me a long time to figure out the 40d modding code. I barely grasp the current modding codes.

Dragon Warrior 3 (GBC) LP
What: Old JRPG with class and character creation, little story in the way of this game, but I add my own flare of creativity with custom sprites and character interaction. The whole bulk of entertainment mainly comes from the characters people request to make.
Difficulty: Medium, I need to download the tools to make updating this topic easy again. I also need to know if the old participants are still interested in reviving this topic.
ECT: Theses guys were in this topic Niur Torir, Boksi, Jervous, Phantom,  Archangel, Spartan, A-chana

Civilization's Demise or X of Y
What: ASCII text adventure, actions (any) are supplemented by the community. Lots of mysteries abound and updates regularly, also easy to do so. Only up to update number eight due to laziness, hehe.
Difficulty: Easy- Very Easy, all I need is five people to suggest some sort of action per update.

Isle Forum Game
What: An idea I had with a lot of time invested into it. Haven't updated it yet and it requires constant participation from the community; so if anyone is missing from the original bunch, that's more of a delay in an update.
Difficulty: Medium- Hard, I need to remake some tiles and create new tiles. There was also a group of fifteen people in the topic. I need to know if they're still in it.
ECT: These people were in the topic, MaximumZero, Barbarossa the Seal God, Vector, Renault, Mindmaker, OmnipotentGrue, techno65535, Solifuge, SeriousConcentrate, Neyvn, Japa, Tack, Ottofar, Tylui, Aqizzar

Kinda unrelated, but I also have a Rouge Survivor tileset going on. :x

NOTE, YOU'D DO GOOD TO READ THIS, ALL OF IT!

Skip to a section of the manual by copying the "CODE" (minus the quotations) and pasting it into the word search feature of your browser.

Index
Intro (Just scroll down)
-Joining (Again, scroll down)

Game basics
(1)Stats "LVDD"
-Conditions "BLHP"
-Atributes "BRBW"
-Skills "KASK"
(2)Turns "1234"
-Auto Actions "IDTK
(3)PC interactions "HTMF"
(4)Exploration "NSWE"

The Game
(4) Map explored "ONWR"
(5) Roster "UMEI"
-Roster detailed "GRPH"

Intro
   Hello fellow Bay12ers! If you would look to this topic, that was the inspiration for creating this forum game! If you haven't seen of or heard of that topic, it basically boils down to "you are stranded on an island, what will you do?"
   Except, you won't get to pick who you want to be with, and there's more than one island. These islands, were randomly generated from DF, gridded to make sense and attached to each other how ever I saw fit. There's a sign up limit of fifteen people. So if this sounds interesting to you, what are you doing? SIGN UP NOW!

Joining
   If you want to join, simply fill out this basic list with the appropriate information.

1:User Name in () Parentheses
2:PC Name, if you want, it can just be your username, doesn't really matter.
Physical traits: Male? Female? Height? Weight? Muscle to fat ratio? These will determine your physical attributes.
3:Skills: Anything you think you're good at. Even stuff such as your latest killer killing kill streak on your favorite FPS will count! These will help me figure out as to what type of edge in this game I can give you. For example, if you're on I don't know, the track team and throw javelins further than anyone else; than I'm going to add bonuses to thrown objects (accuracy, power, ect). That last example only applies if you are doing it per this time frame.
4:Negative aspects: Anything, really, anything this is pretty much the same as skills. If you don't provide anything, than I will make sure that I add some kind of negative aspect to your PC. You probably won't like it too, so being honest will save you a lot of trouble.

*NOTE* Some of you may have un-proportional advantages. That may lead you to some troubles. No one said survival would be easy.

Stats LVDD
   Stats will be tracked akin to LOZ style. Units of stats will be represented by Oos and represent the level of proportion full, respectively. HP obviously represents the overall condition of the PC; when it reaches zero, game over. TH is your PC's level of hydration. Because most creatures cannot live without some form of H20 for too long, you'd do good to keep this full. HU is hunger. Your PC can live much longer with out food, but you still want to keep it as full as you can. ST is your stamina. This determines the level of activity you can accomplish in one game turn. Some actions require ST to accomplish while others are free actions (no ST use) and only consume time. ST can go into the negatives; it will regenerate over time but it will not be fully replenished every turn. CN is your PCs condition. The lower this stat, the worse your PC is currently feeling. It is there to give you a general idea of your PC's health and when low, other stats will be deducted.

Example of what stats basically look like
OOOOO HP
OOOOO TH
OOOOO HU
OOOOO ST
OOOOO CN

Conditions BLHP
   The next thing about stats are conditions. I never planned on tracking individual body parts, instead if say, your PC's left arm is chopped off, it will be counted as a condition. Said conditions will affect your PC by first bleeding, pain and shock. These will affect many checks of course and in the long run make your PC handicapped. CN will go down with more negative conditions.

Attributes BRBW
   These should be quite obvious. Attributes are simply things that are always present, as in mental and physical. Most of these won't change very easily so make do with what you have.

Skills KASK
   How good you are at something. I'll be keeping skills to a mostly short list and track them by simple levels. 0= Unskilled, 1= Dabbling, 2= Competent, 3= Proficient, 4=Skilled and 5= Professional, anything after simply adds bonuses to when you apply the skill, if you survive that long. And no, I will now show you a skill list, only after everyone signs up.

Turns 1234
   Turns, first off there will be a deadline for everyone to input their actions. Even if I'm not done with an update, and one you request your actions after the deadline, your PC will be sitting idle next update. Though don't worry, I won't set the deadlines to incredibly short periods.
   That out of the way, in game turns will count towards two hours of RL time. There are two types of actions your PC can do, "energy actions" and "free actions." Energy actions will always take up an ST point and are limited by your PC's current ST level. Free actions take up no ST and are only limited to how much time they take up. Speed terms, there isn't really much of it. Most actions will be done automatically and in the same time frame of every other thing acting.

Auto Actions ID2K
   There are actions that will obviously come after another actor has acted. When said situations occur, like say PC1 is attacked by some beast, there will be things called "auto-actions" that as their name suggest, will happen automatically "PC1 tries to fend attack." Those situations will probably mess up your PC's initial order of actions. So for the record, when suggesting actions, please state the priority of them. You can also set your AA to whatever you want e.g., "my PC will always greet people politely." (That was an example, please don't suggest stupid time consuming things like that!)

PC interaction HTMF
   PC interaction, as I said before, there are free actions and energy actions. Energy actions are limited to actions that have your PC doing a significant amount of physical labor. Items in this world will come with prefixes that will indicate (when you interact with them) the level of ST you use when interacting with them on a physical level.
       The order of an item's description will come like this: "(){}[]:", the first is weight, second size and third appearance. An example of this will be (Heavy){Large}[mossy]:Log. To keep things simple, some prefixes will constantly be applied to items. Anyway, heavy items will always use one ST unit when using them, large will multiply the use by two and mossy simply means the log is a bit slippery.

In all honesty, you really aren't limited to how you want to interact with your environment. Just make sure you don't waste your time.

Exploration NSWE
   Exploration, ahhh, well to start, I plan on scattering all of you who sign up at random points on the island. You'll all start at some random beach. I'm also not going to give you a map marking everything for your convenience. You have to explore the island to survive. Now, there are two ways to traverse the map. It's pretty much in the same style of DF. The first way to do so is by traveling via region, i.e. traveling the full length of a tile on the world map. The second is by local area or traveling the area of island's tile you're in. In terms of time, a single full tile of island terrain will take two hours to completely traverse, that's if you're not distracted by anything, 3/4 will take 1:30 and going down by half any hour 2/4 terrain will take one hour and 1/4 half an hour. Anything less than 1/4 will take fifteen minutes to completely traverse. Note, the local area of an island terrain consists of 32X32 individual tiles. Also, when traveling across an island map tile, you won't have the entire tile mapped on the main island map, just the part you happened moved across along.

Map explored so far ONWR
   Nothing numb nuts, the game hasn't started!

Roster UMEI
1.MaximumZero
2.Barbarossa the Seal God
3.Vector
4.Renault
5.Mindmaker
6.OmnipotentGrue
7.techno65535
8.Solifuge
9.SeriousConcentrate
10.Neyvn
11.Japa
12.Tack
13.Ottofar
14.Tylui
15.Aqizzar

Roster Detailed GRPH

Anyone else starting school tomorrow? My last two days of summer sure were fun. I've been staying up all night just to finish a three part project for one of them AP classes. I just finished it and it's about eight pages long single space. I'd go for two more, but fuck it. Senior year too, so I can only imagine right now how much of a bitch it's going to be.

After going through a few topics, I've decided to suggest parasites. I'm not talking about those small tape worms or laying eggs in flesh bot flys. NOOO, I'm talking about something way more hardcore.

Remember that movie aliens? Remember that one scene where some poor schmuck gets a face full of alien face hugger? Remember what happens next?


Yep that's what I'm thinking about. I was thinking that there should be a variety of methods for transmittable parasites.

First off there needs to be a way in which they are transmitted. The first is obviously some sorta liquid type, maybe through a stinger or mouth hugging kind, if we want to get more fancy, it could be through some spore release.

The second would be once if gets into the host, where will it stay? I'm thinking some sorta tag associated with organ functions such as...
[PARASITE] The name
[INCUBATES: DIGESTION] Where it stays in organ function areas

After that is the incubation period, that should be fairly easy to do. NEXT! Is how it leaves...
[RELEASE]
[BURSTS] Leaves causing much damage to its host
[SECRETES] Leaves through other methods...

I was browsing the internet just a few minutes ago like any good boy or girl would these days. All of sudden my PC started churning around on the inside. I thought to myself, "Must be AVG updating again." I check my TM to make sure. I click the process tab and; I don't see any AVG utilities doing any work. Instead I see explorer.exe sucking up all of my computer's resources. I close FF to help speed things up. A minute or two later, I am completely shocked, completely!










I believe it listed fifty-three tabs worth of IE. I'm not sure what to make of it. Besides of course that my computer just took a huge fucking shit!

Comments?

And I've come to the idea of building a mega-construction. I have about thirty pages of copper nuggets and have struck magma, I'm no where near building the infrastructure for magma smelters yet but I'd like to think this through.

I have also struck around twenty or more veins of copper and I already have one legendary miner.

Here's the main idea, Statue of Inebriety. What do all of you think?

So, last summer, which in this case is about eight months ago; I took out three books on music theory from my downtown library. One was quite useful, the other two not so much. Before summer ended, one of those books met an unfortunate end (luckily it was the cheapest one). I was terrified to go back with the book in such a condition, so I ignored it, for eight months, along with the other two.

Last time I checked, I owed about $116.89 to the library; that was five or so months ago. I'm dirt poor, but at the same time the longer I ignore, the more the debt accumulates. Problem is, I got cold feet, very, very, very cold feet when it comes to going back to the library.

I've got this sort of image that if I go there, I'll be forced to do something against my will and be stuck for a few days or so, against my will. I have no experience with this, what, the fuck, do, I, DO!?

TL;DR: I HAVE ABOUT $200+ OF LIBRARY FEES, HAVE NO MONEY AND AM A COWARD!