Techwright

I'd love to know if you somehow found a way to remove the dark background elements from dark/dark. I experimented with doing a dark/dark with a different color scheme (electric blue, if I recall correctly), but kept getting an unchanging, underlying black/dark scarlet coloration destroying my effort with my two color choices.

Has the swing dance competition happened yet? 'Cause it's clear these two might be the contenders to watch for.

We're about 5-6 months down the road from the original announcement. What's the latest on this?

SPOILER ALERT Stay clear if you wish to know nothing about MCU casting for upcoming works, nor how the Phase 4 projects might interact. I suspect that is because the MCU movie team more or less abandoned the TV teams. Although there were crossovers with some of the movie characters showing up on TV, the movie team has pointedly left out the TV characters. I personally didn't follow the Luke Cage series, so I don't know how it ended, but he might have been a big help at the Battle of Waukanda or the Endgame Battle, I'd think. Those who track such things point to Kevin Feige, whom they say apparently made a unilateral, unpublished decision to cut ties with the TV units. Agents of SHIELD writers didn't even get notice of a HUGE event in the MCU that affected everyone. As a result, their show ended up playing like a close alternate universe/timeline to the movies, rather than a partner to them. Disney Plus projects are under Feige, and are getting the love the abandoned shows didn't.

Not sure I could make such a call. Hmmm....probably my ill/storm controller, which I've often referred to as my "Swiss Army Knife": a power for most any situation, and enough variety to keep things interesting. But I'm also very fond of my energy blapper, as well as my dark/dark corrupter.

The "I can do this all day" moment.

Has there been any mod issued to restore that "fury" sound? I don't recall it myself, but fulcrum shift should be an important tactic, so it should have an important sound. My buddy and I used to refer to it as the "I WIN" button, but I think they gutted the full strength of the power since we played in the original game.

That is the first time I've ever seen the digital aura seem to fit a character, and honestly, I never thought it would. Well done! In fact, if I were honest, I was afraid we'd all gotten into a repetitive rut on costume designs, and then you guys go and post two of the finest pages this thread has had (113 & 114 on my computer). I'm deeply relieved and seriously impressed! 👍👍 Two thumbs way up to everyone who contributed.

I'd have loved this. That said, it would be a shame if the game was fully set on just Jules Vern's visions. We're talking "Lost World genre" here, and Verne was just a piece of it. H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and others, even Rudyard Kipling, all contributed rich material to the concept. I've long wished there was an MMO that took an Edgar Rice Burroughs approach and allowed exploration of an alternate world Africa, with fabulous Solomonic treasures and lost Roman cities to be found, all while surviving death traps, fighting monstrous beasts and creatures lost to time, and deposing villainous explorers and petty tribal dictators. It could be such fun!

Highly recommend hanging in there. Three will start to evolve the story, and then the jigsaw gets the corners and framework done in four. Hear, hear. I've been disappointed in that. At least have a tag scene to make it worthwhile. Oh, you've started a gem! Some have felt the first 16 episodes were rough (I disagree), but hang in there, it is laying valuable foundation for the rest of the series. Eventually you'll be seeing call-backs to season 1 and going "Oh! So that's why that happened!" Many feel "Turn, Turn, Turn", season 1, episode 17 is where AoS really hit it's stride, but you'll need the preceding episodes to build context. "T, T, T" ran concurrent with the movie "Captain America: The Winter Soldier". MCU has conditioned us to watch credits hunting for tag scenes. Unfortunately, their Disney Plus branch doesn't appear to have gotten the memo.

Well, if this defines "sub-optimal" then I'd vote for the slow animation of Eagle Claw. Combined with my scarf costume element, the ballet between whirling kick and twirling cloth is elegant art in motion. If I've managed to time the shot as the coup de grâce, dropping the enemy, it is a very satisfying finish.

Observation: Question: Speculation: Speculation #2:

I've enjoyed every episode, though sometimes the sitcom comedy felt forced to the point of awkward, but that really might be a deliberate writer's choice to emphasize the oddity that is WandaVision. I do think there's something the production could have handled better: the knowledge level of the casual MCU viewer. One of my coworkers is a casual, and he was (and supposedly his friends were) ready to quit WandaVision after episode two. Everything about it baffled him, which came from only a passing knowledge of Wanda and Vision in the comics. A couple of us had to sit him down and explained the comic book details of Wanda and Vision before he began to realize that we were seeing the episodes from an entirely different vantage point, I know in a different video under "Legends" Disney rehashed most of Wanda's movie screen time, but I'm not certain casuals would have realized it's significance. They've likely forgotten the first appearance in a tag scene where Wanda both created constructs seemingly out of thin air, then squashed them to pancakes all while displaying the face of a bored child. It showed both her creative and destructive potential in one small shot. Somehow adding that up front to WandaVision might have clued the casual viewers in that something more sinister lay underneath. Sinister...now there's a name with potential to really ruin Wanda's life.

(spoilers ahead) The MCU is back and with its strangest entry to date: WandaVision. Thoughts, discussions, and especially speculations? How did you like the show as it has progressed, especially now that the all-important fourth episode has been released? Please remember the forum rules for spoiler-y talk.

Interesting roster decision. Do you recall why that set was picked instead of, say, one each of tank, defender, scrapper, blaster, and controller? Was it the removal of archetypes that could team heal that mattered?

Ah, I've not heard this title in decades. Our student teacher read The Black Cauldron to us in our 6th grade year a couple of years before the Disney adaptation came out. Haven't seen that in decades either. Fun action/drama category. Got it. I'd have to put some thought into that one. I've so many I enjoy. The Rocketeer would definitely be high on the list. I modeled my Ace Barnstormer slightly on that character.

Preventing using AH for storage is a weak argument. With 1000 character slots per server, I can have both a ton of new heroes/villains, AND a ton of mules. This in addition to my bank slot, my AH storage slots, and the ability for each character to create their own supergroup and max out the storage in a lair. If storage is really (somehow) a concern, and there really is a need to bleed off currency, why not enrich the look and feel of the game while doing it? On the simplest level, limit free storage and have the system charge an incremental monthly fee for anything above that. It would need to be encompassing, though, because of the mule and supergroup storage methods. Assuming that can (somehow) be handled, you now have the chance for incremental, monthly paid storage. The simplest way to deal with this is in the bank. One can continue stuffing the bank vault, but everything above a set limit receives a monthly fee, bleeding off currency. If there's no player activity (by account) for 6 months, or the character's currency is completely drained, then the paid vaults are seized and the contents "auctioned to pay the bills", similar to what happens in the real world. So one would have to be careful what gets put into the paid vaults. But take it a bit further. The bank is the simple way, but the stylish way would be to add, or improve, on the city, specifically: Think about it. I'm pretty sure we've something like this already in the port areas, though it's all gray and blah. Instead, if the devs are up to the challenge, we can get sheds painted bold colors, and maybe fencing & retainer walls, even statements of "climate controlled". The player can then designate the size of storage, and auto-pay the monthly fees on that. If they want to store 10,000 threat reports and can afford to fork over the monthly fee, why not? And the city looks richer and a bit more like a real city in the doing.

Well, I played the life out of Firefall, through all its good and bad, but then the new owners got all mysterious and pulled the plug a few years back so... I like the Civ series, but I'll share an unconventional one: Rail Baron Player (hereafter "RBP"). I've not played it since upgrading to Windows 10 a couple months back, but it's definitely on my replay value list. For those who don't know it, RBP, is a computerized adaptation of an old Avalon Hill board game, Rail Baron. That in turn, has some key similarities to Monopoly, but has a different enough format that it is clearly its own game. One moves a "train" around a board composed of historical rail lines, gaining wealth for each successful station-to-station haul (determined by the role of the dice). You're goal is to upgrade your train, buy up key lines, bankrupt other players by forcing them to pay fees for riding your network of rails, all while moving to certain victory conditions. The board game is a lot of fun for 4 to 6 players, and the computer game improves on that by significantly faster game play, as well as offering an optional solo game with competent A.I. players, as well as expansion game boards that cover historic railroads in other countries, state-level railroads, and fantasy railways. The graphics are basic compared to today's possibilities, but they're quite sufficient for allowing the focus to be the game, and not just a beautiful board. There's even an expansion option for creating your own board with rail systems of your design, and an option to print out everything to make your own board game. https://www.railgamefans.com/rbp/rbp.htm Pro tip: If playing the USA map, it's more important to buy railroads that connect east to west, rather than north to south, as the greatest cost threat lies in riding others' railroads for a long haul east to west without your own railroad system nearby. Likewise an east-west rail system that cuts diagonally across the continent is to be preferred above one that runs horizontally east-west.

I'm apparently a rare species who doesn't fully like how Ahsoka was brought to live action. She's terribly slow, for one. Ahsoka's signature style included lightning-fast reflexes. But I do see the strong potential for improvement, so I'm not dismissive. The animated Ahsoka might well be my favorite Star Wars character, so I'd be silly not to give the team a chance to grow the live-action version. If the live series is to have Sabine, eventually Ezra, and especially Thrawn, I'm fully onboard. I don't know how physically fit Lars Mikkelsen might be to inhabit the live version of Thrawn, but I think if that is sufficient, he should be given the first rights to the role, like Katie was given for Bo-Katan. His voice performance was that good. (I still get chills hearing Thrawn seeth at Governor Price "I will DEAL with you later...'Governor'.") If he's unable to do it, I do hope they'll consider Benedict Cumberbatch, and Matt Smith, two men who just feel like they too could inhabit the role. Benny actually would make sense from a Disney standpoint, as the corp has been starting to shift popular actors from one franchise (in this case, Marvel) to another franchise (Star Wars), and it would be a bit like playing an evil Sherlock Holmes, to boot. Matt's younger than the character would be, but he's skilled at playing an old soul, and the makeup effects on Mandalorian have been top-notch, so aging him wouldn't be a problem. And the few times he played a compromised Doctor, he chilled with the performance of a cunning mind.

I find it's easier to take if it is understood to be foundational work for what is to come. Foundations are not the beautiful part of a house, but they are an essential part. Season 1 may seem a desert, but deserts have flowers, if you know where to look. There's still some really beautiful things in season 1. G'Kar's explanation to Catherine about the terrifying mystery at Sigma 957, for one. It's the first time I realized G'Kar had the soul of a poet, and was so much more than a foil for Londo. There's also actor Dwight Shultz's turn as a tortured PTSD vagabond with more backbone than he realized. That was some fine acting. That all said, I do wish they'd firmed up the Minbari physical appearance before filming the pilot movie. The story is foundational, but the look is so radically different as to be distracting. Lastly, I'm glad they remastered the series, but it could really use the same treatment given to Star Trek, The Original Series, and have modern CGI space sequences replacing the dated special effects. What they achieved, and on Amiga computers of all things, was remarkable for its time, and could be preserved as an option in a special edition DVD set, but refreshing the space scenes would really refresh the look of the show.

I still think Disney owes us a Rocketeer trilogy, though I'd be a tad afraid of the (understandably needed) recasting. Perhaps if they put Jon Favreau over the project... I'm curious what propels a film to top 20 status for you. A few of these have worldwide agreement (The Princess Bride for one). Some are known for their cutting-edge movie magic skills (The Rocketeer & American Werewolf being two). But there are some on the list, I'll not name them, that I'd be surprised to find on anyone's top 100, let alone the top 20. And I'm curious why films like Citizen Kane or To Kill A Mockingbird don't appear. "To each his own" as they say, but I'm interested to know if there are criteria beyond a possible statement of "I just like it". Incidentally, The Princess Bride is a classic to me. I've only found one flaw with the film, and it's nit-picky. I didn't like the use of the synthesized music. I'd really love a special edition where the music is re-recorded using a full symphonic orchestra. Well, two flaws: there was no sequel. But I've gotten used to disappointment.

You might consider "The Phalanx" with a Greek motif. After all, it was the Freedom Phalanx that put the city to rights after the rise of mobster rule in the Prohibition Era, and has backed the good of the city ever since.

I really struggled to like "Into Darkness" but ended up hating it. So many points of issue, but one could have been corrected by adding a simple line: white guy Khan: "Admiral Marcus had me surgically altered and gave me a generic name so that no one with any knowledge of Earth history training would recognize me." I mean, think about it: if we have pictures of Gabriel Bell in the online textbooks (DS9), pictures of the rulers of half the planet would have been all over the future web. I never met Napoleon, yet I know exactly what he looked like through numerous pieces of artwork. Yet no mention is made of why Khan isn't recognized, nor why he went from Indian to British Caucasian. One simple line. Okay, I'm confused. I know Viacom split Trek ownership to both CBS and Paramount. But I thought they had worked it out that Paramount would handle the movies and CBS would handle the TV shows. Now ViacomCBS is making the movie announcement, but Hawley (in his statement the OP quoted) is in talks with Paramount? Sorting these guys out is starting to give headaches.

Brilliant episode, that one. I liked how it tied up neatly the full two seasons. Sure there are other stories it clearly points to, but had Disney pulled a Fox and unplugged the show at that point, we'd still have a full story arc. As it is, now we have a new story arc and cast dynamic to look forward to, and the confirmation of a spinoff series for one of the most popular characters in Star Wars. Win-Win.

BBC show? This isn't the one with Doctor Who's Peter Capaldi as Richelieu is it?