WaLkAwaY

My holiday traditions (not sure how long it has to be done for it to be a tradition) include: I will drive up around Lake Tahoe and go hiking the weekend before Christmas. Been doing this since I have lived in California. But have done it in every state around various mountain ranges. I will watch Aliens and Aliens 2 whilst making holiday dinner. Been doing this for as long as I can remember or as long at least as I have been making holiday dinner. I make a huge, I am talking HUGE holiday spread. I do this expecting my brother and some of the guys he works with to be home but more often than not I get stuck eating it alone. I go watch a movie in a theater. Usually xmas day or the night before. You would think they would be closed but it is actually a pretty busy night for theaters. Not sure of the title this year I have not looked. I get a Holiday card picture taken, with my dog. That might seem strange to some of you but she is my best friend. I go to San Francisco and watch the Nutcracker Ballet in the War Memorial Opera House. Been doing this every single year. Have only missed 7 I think. Myself and a friend (sometimes my brother) will go to the mall and watch people. We will sit across from each other and take a pad of drawing paper and colored pens and draw a picture of someone in the crowd that the other person has to guess which person it is. Like I will draw a Christmas tree and the other person picks out the person in the crowd who is wearing a green shirt and brown pants. It might sound stupid but it is fun. My brother and I have a lot of friends that have died as the result of war. We used to visit their graves but out of practicality we decided that we should pick one place and then just read their names out loud reminisce about them. I visited the Arlington National Cemetery last year and this is something I am making into a tradition, I will either visit the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia or visit the National Cemetery located at the Presidio of San Francisco. Well I think that is it. I might think of some more things that I have done but up until now I have not seen a pattern. What are yours?

Hmm, that sounds really good as well. :)

Imagine, bacon stuffed with dark chocolate or milk chocolate. You might be on to something there.

The moment we've all been waiting for... it's HERE! I was at a hospital yesterday going through some records and one of the workers was eating this. http://swat-clan.net/wabbie/choco%20cover%20bacon.JPG Just in case you are interested I included a link to the company. Vosges They even have dark chocolate covered bacon so you can get your supply of antioxidants. :woot:

Can a moderator please fix two of my links. I tried fixing them but for some reason I cannot. The "Societal Acceptance of Rape and Sexual Assault" link for some reason says "bad request" when you click on it and after I tried to fix it my second embedded youtube video went all wonky and un-embedded itself. Thank you. EDIT: Oh and I was going to use the report feature but it said that that was only for objectionable content. So I posted. Thanks again. :) EDIT: Okay, I figured out what the first problem was. The title of the file had a banned or forbidden word in the title of it. So I had to upload an edited version of the file with a different title. So that one works now but I still have the embed issue.

April is sexual assault awareness month. Every year I try to include one more site in the circle of sites that I visit with this message. I wait until halfway through the month to post or revive this thread because I understand the difficulty sometimes associated with reviewing the content. I am a gamer and as such the sites I visit are full of gamers of all ages and is also one of the largest mediums of free time. Since sexual assault can happen to anyone at anytime anywhere I felt posting on gaming forums was a great way to reach people of all ages to not only show support but to also educate and provide helpful links and information. I am making this thread in hopes people will take the time to educate themselves and find out what sexual assault is. I am providing links to some sites and also some power point presentations that were done by college students. If you are so inclined please take a few moments and check out the links and read the PPT's. Preface: Anyone who has been sexually assaulted and lived is a survivor of sexual assault. Anyone who has been sexually assaulted is also a victim of sexual assault. Although both of these are true they both carry very different views about the person who was assaulted and how they are viewed by others and themselves. Sexual assault is a crime committed by predators and abusers, it has victims and if those victims live, survivors. Sexual assault happens in many forms, can happen anywhere and can happen to anyone at anytime. You might know someone who is a victim/survivor of sexual assault, you might know them and not even know they are a victim/survivor. If someone tells you about it consider yourself lucky that the victim/survivor has confided in you because for a lot of victim/survivors it is hard to talk about. Focus on rape: Reactions and adjustments to rape vary greatly depending on age, maturity, life experience and support system. As a victim/survivor of rape I can tell you that victim/survivors run the gambit of emotions in the aftermath of what happened. Denial, disbelief, guilt, loathing, self blame, shame, doubt. They try to minimize it, pretend it did not happen or that it was their fault. IMO rape is worse than death. The biggest difference between death and rape is that a rape victim/survivor is left alive to relive their death over and over for the rest of their life. Confused? Try this. Everything about you, who you were, who you were going to be, your very soul is ripped from you and murdered right in front of you. Death is finality, rape is living with it for the rest of your life. You will never get over the rape but you will accept it has happened. There is no time limit or magic number of when a person accepts it and some never will. This thread was made for educational purposes it is not a debate thread. Out of everything I do in life I take this topic the most seriously. Please keep all comments on topic and please be respectful. If you have questions about anything but feel uncomfortable about asking it here you can PM me. http://www.nsvrc.org/saam http://www.nsvrc.org/ http://www.rainn.org/ Family and friends of the victim/survivor of sexual assault are also deeply impacted by the trauma. http://www.pandys.or...ysurvivors.html http://www.turningpo...d%20Friends.htm Adobe PDF files. I tried to get Open Office Org files too but they were requiring people to dld a zip, personally I would not dld anything in zip format from anyone I did not really know so I decided to forgo the OOo files. Adobe PDF Breaking The Silence Societal Acceptance of Rape and Sexual Assault College Sexual Assault http://swat-clan.net/wabbie/no%20rape5.jpg http://swat-clan.net/wabbie/no%20rape.jpg http://swat-clan.net/wabbie/no%20rape%204.jpg http://swat-clan.net/wabbie/no%20rape%201.jpg http://swat-clan.net/wabbie/no%20rape%202.jpg It does not matter how a woman or man is dressed or how he/she acts. Rape is caused by rapists. It does not matter what she/he does for a living or if he/she is flirtatious. Rape is caused by rapists. It does not matter if he/she said yes at first but then wants to stop. Rape is caused by rapists. Coercion is rape. Rape is caused by rapists. It does not matter if he/she has marks on her/his body or if he/she struggles. Rape is caused by rapists. If she/he cannot say no it is rape. Rape is caused by rapists Depending on where you get your information 2.5 - 6% or 5 - 9% of rapes accusations are false accusations. However just because a woman/man drops the charges, settles out of court or takes monetary compensation does not mean that the charges brought against the alleged rapist were false. Many women/men do not want to relive or recount the details of their rape. Many parents do not want to make their child relive or recount their rape. Some simply want to move on. Out of all crimes rape is the easiest to get away with and the hardest to prove. Resurrection [video=youtube;y9UXWdao1uU] [video=youtube;39yi_TBtkKg] Thank you for your time and hopefully your support.

Hi :biggrin: I was just curious, I saw that Battle Field has its own area and was wondering where I would post a Modern Warfare 3 montage I made? I thought about the PC area but was not sure and I did not want to post it in the BF area as well the video and off topic areas did not seem appropriate either. Thanks for you time.

So I have what I think is a really cool direction I want to take my videos. I want to add text and pop ups to my videos that mirror or copy those you find in the game. Pretty much exact duplicates or as close as I can get them to being exact as I can. Though they wont be exactly like the ones from the game as mine are going to say different things. In the video you are about to watch you will find four clips one of MW3, two of MW2 and one of BO. Below I have listed where I need those that feel they can/want to help me to pay attention as the list points out what I am looking for. MW3: The "+1150, Pay back and Double Kill" type text. The "SamTurret" (including the little picture) and the "8 Point Streak!" Text. As well as the "P90: MarksmanII get 25 kills with this weapon" that pops up at the right hand side. MW2: The "3 Kill Streak! Press 4 for UAV" text as well as the little picture. Not so important is the sliding "UMP45: Veteran I" text that comes after it. Excuse the 3rd clip of the same kill as above it was just meant to show case the important part of the sequence. I am not to concerned with the way it gets really large in the screen as I think this may have been done by the original poster of the video. BO: The little pop up Scavenger pack thing. And more importantly the pop up text and graphic that says "Scalper killed an enemy with a Tomahawk. +50". I think all of those clips show the numbers fading in and out being large when they pop up and slowly getting smaller as they disappear. This is something else I need to learn. I have just recently started reading and watching videos on transitions but have yet to find a video or tutorial that goes in depth toward what I am trying to do. And I have not really looked at keyframes yet. So I am not looking for a hand out I will do my homework if you can point me in the right direction with links for video tutorials or written tutorials that would be great. Though if you wanted to spend your time writing it up and explaining it to me that would be greatly appreciated as well. :D The programs I have are Adobe Master Collection CS4, Sony Vegas Pro 10, FRAPS, Bandicam and ACDSee Pro 3. I have used Gimp and VirtualDub but they are on another machine. Thank you for your time. EDIT: Also my videos will be of games played on PC, if that makes any difference. :) [video=youtube;RoVyvJChTBk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoVyvJChTBk

I can see the OP point. I believe what he is saying is that regardless of what you do in the game, how you attain something and using skills/items/devices as long as you did not cheat there should be no reason why a game should not stay within a certain range of difficulty to your character. That being said @OP, others have stated that the game levels with your character when it does maybe it does not take into account your current armor/weapons?

:rolleyes: ______________________________________________________________ Anyway thanks for the replies people. Maybe the playable character actions impacting the world and NPC's will come from a mod? Weren't there complete game makeovers for Oblivion? I think another thing it might come down to based on some of the responses is how you personally feel about your involvement in the game and character having a direct impact on how much you time one feels they will spend on a game. I guess to someone who believes the game is everything they wanted then them spending time on it seems like a no brainer. To someone who wants something a little different or who's ideas of fun are different then they might not spend as much time or not even play it. To each their own as far as what they find fun. I guess the being able to ride dragons and hunt for food stuff will just have to wait until they release the SDK. :)

Yes this site has definitely changed. Or I should say gathering of sites. Come to think of it though this is the only site where I could leave for a year, come back and the member base/type and views of the members stay the same. Sorry went off topic... I believe what you said is true Pushkatu, one of the mods I cannot wait for and I know if it can be done someone will do it, riding Dragons! :) I might even try my hand at modding myself.

Hi Pushkatu long time. ________________________ I think once the real game changing or revision mods come out a lot of that "cannot put my finger on it" feeling will go away. As more and more in depth game changing mods are released this game could grow to be another Oblivion maybe? Then again Dragon age (last time I looked) did not take off like everyone thought it would either. I might be mistaken about DA and DA2 I have not looked in a while. Oblivion to me seemed like the SIMS for RPG's maybe I was just wondering how close Skyrim is or will become to that level.

Thanks for the prompt replies. Oblivion had me amazed but also had me going in circles. About the time I was playing it there was this one mod that I discovered that you could only use the item if you found it in the prison cell at the beginning. Kept starting over to go find it and then kept losing it for some reason. Really looking forward to this game and after looking around the files area a bit i see there are already many mods out or at least I think they are mods. I was speaking to someone on a different forum and they said they ran up against a dragon and it just let him beat on it. So I was thinking that the AI has a bug or two. The potion making seems a little nerfed from what it was in Oblivion and I did not find a section in the guide that talks about spells and creating or collecting ingredients for them. Then again I have only read the guide a little and gave the TOC a cursory glance. I think I remember making arrows in Oblivion right down to choosing what type of feather to use. Collecting food and also weather effects were awesome too.

Hi I swear I searched for the word "immersion", before I posted this. So if there is already a thread about it I apologize in advance. I was wondering what the level of immersion was like in Skyrim compared to Oblivion. I played Oblivion and loved how you could pretty much do anything with added mods and it kept the game alive forever for me. The only hiccup i ran into was when I changed computers and I did not want to spend the countless hours going back through the mods again. I have had Skyrim loaded on my PC for a week or more yet have not played it as I was waiting until I could post here. I played vanilla Oblivion as well as Morrowind as well before modding them. So my choice of not playing vanilla Skyrim unless I have to or at least before I was able to come here and get some feedback is a premeditated one. So if anyone wants to throw down their thoughts about the immersion of Skyrim I would appreciate it.

Yes that was exactly it. Thank you so much. :)