Father Xmas

I loved that car. So easy to take apart. And then hide all the pieces from the guy who owned it. Ah college.

Well Felicia's doing Codex, again. I will assume that's the fault of the writers, taking the easy way out.

On W13 they preemptively nuked the whole Claudia/Jinx pairing. Of course that simply encouraged the Pete/Jinx fanfic writers.

Gee, can't we get one superhuman series where it isn't them Vs all of humanity. Work for the men in black or get cut upped. At least the Company in heroes was organized by supers instead of mundanes.

Well the GR "disk" is almost Issue 18 and we are now on Issue 20.5. A good chunk of the pigg files have changed since then.

Autocap texting.

You used the evil H word, Healer. We don't need no stinkin' healers. Buffs >> Heals

The buffs and heals from a Fire/Thermal are OK but don't forget you are still a fairly powerful range/AoE character due to Scourge which is a great way to finish off critters (plus all the lovely flames with Fire Blast powerset).

I imagine it's a lot of work writing the software that converts game info into a 3D model that looks good without manual intervention. Especially a game like ours that has tons of different costume pieces that can be mixed and matched, compared to that other game.

I will miss the relative quiet compared to the bustling of Atlas Park, especially back in the days.

Well, they were cheaper when places like NewEgg were flushing out all the old inventory. Now they are the same if you can find them at all. $100 after rebate isn't bad for a card that can do UM at the lower settings.

Wicked Lasers

Yes, figured that out after watching I think the second episode, 3 MONTHS AGO. Thank you for playing.

Damn forum ate my post.

First, according to the DxDiag output you have 2GB of RAM. That's good. What's bad is your system only has 2 RAM slots so I'm guessing they are both filled. Also the motherboard itself can't handle more than 2GB of memory (limitation of the Intel 945GC chipset). Sorry, no memory upgrade path for you but you may be able to get back the 256MB the integrated graphics is stealing from main memory. It's better than nothing.

Now due to the fact it's an Compaq/HP case, I wouldn't have recommended the Antec HCG-520 power supply because of it's size, which is 0.8" longer than the "standard" dimensions for a PC power supply. No big deal if you are building yourself or if the case was even a standard microATX sized case but prebuilt HP/Dell/Compaq PCs seem to have cases chosen not for convenience of assembly but by how many can fit in a shipping container.

I would recommend either the Antec Earthwatts EA-430D (430 watts) or EA-500D (500 watts) power supply as they are standard size. Right now the EA-500D is a bit cheaper than the EA-430D but prices change frequently at NewEgg. Either are enough for the video card that Hyper recommended.

As for the video card be aware that the HD 6770 is identical to the HD 5770 except in name. When AMD upgraded their high and very high power video cards to the 6000 series GPU chp, they didn't upgrade the mid level series chip at all and simply renamed the existing cards. Reason I'm pointing this out is you may be able to find HD 5770 cards for less than the HD 6770.

Your limiting factor after upgrading the video is the CPU. 1.6GHz Dual Core E2140 in the big picture a rather modest CPU of the Core 2 family and that's being kind. At least it's better than most Pentium Ds. Also due to the age of the system and the list of compatible CPUs on the above linked motherboard page, you will have a tough time finding an upgrade.

Well with a 945 we know it's an Intel CPU and he should have access to a PCIe x16 slot. That CPU may still be a Pentium 4 family or early Core 2 family.

More memory will speed up the load times, smooth out your frame rate by reducing swap file thrashing (which you will get with very low memory) but won't increase your current frame rate (while standing around) or allow you to raise the graphic settings.

A better video card should allow you to raise the graphic settings and improve your frame rate but with only 1GB of system memory, you graphics will still stutter whenever the swap file thrashes. One unexpected problem for people upgrading their video card is the fact the better ones all require a more substantial power supply than what normally comes in your basic store bought Dell/HP/Compaq PC. Some of these PCs are a real pain when it comes to upgrading the power supply as well.

To give us a better idea what you have let me suggest that you post the output from DxDiag, at least the first part up to the System Devices, just after the Disk Drive section. I'm suggesting this instead of "our" CoHHelper application because you don't have to download anything and it sounds like you aren't super PC savvy. This will give us a more complete understanding of what you have instead of us playing 20 questions.

All you need to do to run DxDiag is select Start in the Windows Taskbar, select "Run..." in the left column, type in dxdiag in the Open: field and click OK. That should run Microsoft's DirectX Diagnostic Tool. Once the little progress bar disappears, press the "Save All Information..." button and you will prompted where to save it. Then post that file here.

when that 1 watt laser "pointer" came out. Nice hand repulsor adaption though.

Hand mounted laser could be used as weapon

While Part 1 sort of dragged in parts, Part 2 felt way to quick IMO.

And the giggle of girls sitting in front of me felt the movie catered to the boys because of the front and center Hermione cleavage shot but didn't have a naked Harry, if only for a moment, during the afterlife scene.

Oh and who else thought the HP inspired 3D glasses were a cute touch?

I always thought it was funny that people constantly portray TV from the 60s and 70s as camp and cheesy. Guess what, TV was the red headed step child to movie studios back then and most had a budget so tiny when compared to today's programs on the major networks, even adjusted for inflation. Yes SciFi series back then didn't have the budget for all the cool effects we have today. Buck Rodgers and the original Battlestar Galactica had surprisingly large FX budgets for their pilots and then reused the footage for the entire series with the odd extra footage shot from time to time which then got reused later.

Also over the 40 odd years the very structure of TV genres have changed. Somebody develops an interesting twist to the existing drama or comedy and within a few years most shows will mirror that until the next twist and the process repeats. Do that a few iterations and soon a police drama like Dragnet looks nothing like today's police dramas. Are today's police dramas anything like Dragnet or Atom 12? Are today's legal dramas anything like Perry Mason?

Yes there are a few "comedy" episodes on the original Star Trek but it wasn't all camp.

That other game had nearly 10 years and 3 RTS games plus expansions to build up a world back story before the MMO was released. Now tack on an additional 6 plus years with multiple paid expansions and updated content and you can see how they happen to have "massive amount of backstory that was well known and well documented".

While we have a working back story that can be learned if players actually did mission arcs and are bothered to read the supporting text, they can learn the back story as well.

That is one of the better if not the best Yokos there. She joined in on the ANN discussion thread about her picture and talked about the problems with a top that wouldn't stay in place.

I think they are spinning Hydra as the Nazi super science branch.

Yes Equality_NA, you should be reasonably fine. It's just that some people don't equate an improvement in resolution means the video card needs to work harder. Most simply think along the line of moving a console from one TV to another where TV size doesn't matter because the game runs at a fixed resolution regardless. Just don't go nuts with AA/AF settings right away.

In PC gaming a larger monitor usually means a higher resolution (especially when using an HDTV as your monitor) and then we get "why did my frame rate plummet" posts because their existing video card wasn't powerful enough for the new resolution. Just wanted to make sure you went into this with your eyes open.

Also just because Crysis 2 plays at a high frame rate doesn't mean anything. All game engines are different and CoH/V isn't necessarily optimized for maximum frame rate. Also CoH/V uses OpenGL while Crysis 2 uses Dx9 or Dx11 if you use that patch.

There was a "new billboard" thread over in the City Life board when Issue 20.5 hit. There are a few others about in Paragon and Rogue Isles.

Since it does work with other ATI drivers and the breakage occurred when the driver was changed and not the game, it's clearly ATI's problem.

For some reason the topic of printing solar cells makes me think of today's xkcd.

Yes it will but as the resolution goes up, the amount of GPU power needed to maintain the same frame rate will also go up.

Translation, if you were playing at 1280x1024 expect your frame rate to drop going to 1920x1080 (58% more pixels per frame) at the same graphic game settings unless you already had a really decent video card or your game settings weren't all that high to begin with.