Dark

Game Informations : Developer: Carolyn Peti Platforms: PC Initial release date: October 12, 2012 at 7:21PM PDT When it was first announced, Ultima Online: Third Dawn seemed to have a very simple purpose. It would give Ultima Online a much-needed facelift to keep hard-core players interested and also to attract some new ones, all to bide time for Origin's eagerly anticipated follow-up, a game called Ultima Worlds Online: Origin. But then Electronic Arts pulled the plug on Ultima Online's would-be successor, and thus the context for Third Dawn changed dramatically. While the game originally seemed like a modest but respectable update to the long-running massively multiplayer role-playing game, Ultima Online fans are now left to wonder whether this is it. To be sure, Third Dawn represents a significant change in the basic design of Ultima Online. Specifically, it strips out the original 2D graphics engine and replaces it with a 3D polygonal one. The results, though mostly for the best, are nonetheless mixed. While the new 3D engine allows for some very cool effects--for example, the glowing particles during spell animations--the visual quality of many items in the game has actually gotten worse. For instance, the player portrait artwork (the "paper doll" used for equipping items and so forth) is not particularly impressive. Although each type of weapon, shield, and piece of armor has a unique look, few of these things actually look very good. Characters' faces are nicely detailed in the new engine, but things like chain mail are rather ugly. Thanks to the 3D engine and some new motion-captured animations, combat looks much more impressive than it did in the original 2D game. Characters swing their weapons with fluidity and even get beaten down with equal grace. The appearance of most monsters has also been dramatically improved with the new engine. Dragons look especially good, but even weaker creatures, such as orcs and ratmen, are very nicely updated. Those creatures that don't look as good, like the silly new earth elementals, are the exception rather than the rule. The new engine also lets you zoom in on the action, which has little function but for giving you an up-close look at monsters or other players. The world itself is somewhat better looking than before, thanks primarily to the newly designed trees, which add much greater depth to the visual appearance of Britannia. Unfortunately, Third Dawn still suffers from some annoying problems with its terrain, and a few of these have been around since the earliest days of the original game. These include patches of wildflowers that cause the player to rebound while running, as well as odd terrain elevation differences that can completely hide a dead monster's body. Another change in Third Dawn is the revamped interface, which features a handy toolbar that runs across the top of the screen. This bar includes buttons for the paper doll, your inventory, a list of your skills, and a pull-down menu of numerous social animations you can use while interacting with other players. These include things such as "vigorous arguing" motions and elaborate bows, and they're all generally quite well animated. The backpack graphics for your inventory, as well as the graphics for other containers found throughout the gameworld, have all been replaced with generic gray windows labeled with icons. So if you double-click on a dead monster to loot it, the icon on the gray window is a skull. Or if you double-click on a backpack to look inside, and the image of a bag appears as the icon. This change does make the game look more refined and definitely provides a more consistent styling to the interface, but many players have complained about how bland this looks in Third Dawn--so the switch has not been universally welcomed. The other significant addition in Third Dawn is the new land of Ilshenar. This new landmass promises to offer new monsters to fight and new weapons and armor types to discover. It can be accessed only through moongates, which now use a convenient menu system that lets you choose your destination quickly and easily. Mark, recall, and gate spells do not work on Ilshenar, and many of the monsters there are quite powerful. This makes it more suitable as a high-level character's stomping grounds. One of the best things about Ilshenar is that there will not be any player-built housing allowed on the new landmass. This should make it a po[CENSORED]r place for players looking to get away from the mainland areas, which are now glutted with houses no matter where you explore. Though many players clearly like the housing features, the buildings simply take up too much room and are far too numerous on most servers. But that's the least of the game's problems at the moment. It's true that Ultima Online: Third Dawn is a solid update of a game that has evolved into a fine online role-playing experience. But compared with the competition--both currently available and forthcoming--Third Dawn doesn't have all that much to offer. Although the switch to a 3D engine may be seen as an attempt to attract new players, Third Dawn is nonetheless best suited for Ultima Online's current users (who can upgrade for $9.95 or get it for free if they participated in the beta tests). That's because, despite Third Dawn, Ultima Online still isn't easy to get into; it's an acquired taste, which many acquired back when there was nothing else available or similar. But now, anyone entering Britannia's universe for the first time will probably find the world less appealing and less novice-friendly than those of EverQuest and Asheron's Call, to say nothing of the many other online alternatives currently in development.

Diki

10 king

73

795

2022

Happy birthday @FearLess to our former csbd designer, I hope you have a good time on this special day ❤️

Accepted.

Happy brithday feo hjdpta XD

v1, text and effect.

Happy Brithday!!! ❤️

@DeepPurple Got promoted founder to Daddy-Boss, congratulations best friend!! @Danywex (Bisky) Got promoted Founder to Daddy-Boss, congratulation friend!!

Vote v1: 8 Vote v2: 2 Winner @Akrapovic;, Congratulations!

Welcome

v1, text and blur

The Samsung Tech Days have not only brought us news about future RAM memory standards, but they have also talked about their NAND Flash memory, specifically their V7 QLC with which they hope to improve the performance of the NVMe and SATA SSDs they use. 4 bits per cell for storage. What is its performance and what news does it bring? There is no doubt that the great challenge with the use of non-volatile RAM for storage is precisely the cost per stored bit, which is much higher than conventional hard drives and prevents their transition. Although the chips with 5 bits per cell are on the roadmap, at the moment the most that has been achieved is to reach the QLC memory with 4. Well, Samsung in its Tech Days 2021 has presented its new NAND Flash memory for home computers, which we will see installed inside the SSD in the near future. So let's see what its performance is. How is the Samsung V7 QLC? SSD Samsung V5 V6 V7 QLC tLC First of all, we must highlight that Samsung's NAND Flash V7 QLC is built in 176 layers and therefore it is 3D NAND QLC. So from the outset the storage capacity should at least double, since Samsung's V-NAND memory currently uses 96 layers. Although the most important thing here is its performance, Samsung claims that the write speed will increase 2.7 times and the read speed by 2.6 times. This is key to building cheaper NVMe SSDs that don't require the use of as many memory channels and thus open up the capacity to cheaper drives. On the other hand, although the solid state drives compatible with PCI Express 5.0 are still somewhat distant in time, we must not forget that this bandwidth is achieved between the flash controller and the system RAM through said interface. The data is in the NAND Flash chips and not making them evolve in speed is a huge bottleneck in terms of the performance of this type of units. The future of SSDs is in QLC Samsung 870 QLC Lost Performance The headline is not our words, but those of Samsung itself who have stated that, as has happened with TLC memory, they not only expect most solid-state drives for PCs to use QLC cells, but also mobile devices and for that matter. both memories and the UFS used as storage will also transition to this type of cells. The key to achieving this transition will be increasing the capacity of the SLC Cache to support higher read and write volumes. Let's not forget that the increase in bandwidth will fill up faster, reducing performance considerably. For example, as seen in the image, the Samsung QLC-SSD 870 QVO reduces its bandwidth to 160 MB / s when the SLC Cache runs out due to its small size, a speed too low to be a significant advantage. compared to conventional hard drives. They hope to solve this 4-bit NAND Flash performance problem with the ability of the Q7 VLC to run at speeds of approximately 500 MB / s with the SLC Cache full, which will cause SSDs that make use of this type of NAND Flash. end up gaining more market share.

Accepted. For now you will be accepted in the team, improve a little your avatars and the activity in "Avatar request"

Game Informations : Developer: Carolyn Peti Platforms: PC Initial release date: October 12, 2012 at 7:21PM PDT Back in 1987, when the NES was at the peak of its reign, the video game world was not yet ready for the open-world urban crime adventure. But today, a quarter century later, Retro City Rampage lets you experience what the genre might have been like if it had been introduced on that now-primitive platform. In terms of its gameplay, it's often not quite faithful enough to the games of the era that inspired it, and in terms of its difficulty, it's sometimes too faithful. But all in all, Retro City Rampage is an enjoyable experience in which old meets new to create something both fresh and familiar. Now Playing: Video Review – Retro City Rampage In Retro City Rampage's Story mode, you play as Player, a low-ranking henchman in a supercriminal's army. Following an introductory series of stages that references The Dark Knight, Mario Bros., Mega Man 2, Frogger, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Super Mario Bros. 2, Back to the Future, and much more, you're set free in the city of Theftropolis to spend your time as you see fit. You can complete story missions or ignore them, and spend your time causing chaos and competing in the score-based challenges scattered all over town. Every mission in Retro City Rampage's Story mode skewers video games, movies, or TV shows of the 80s. If you have any reverence for icons of 80s pop culture, don't be surprised if versions of those icons show up in RCR and are made to suffer some indignities. (The Ghostbusters, for instance, are spoofed here as the Go-Go Busters. Their job is even messier and nastier than catching and occasionally getting slimed by ghosts.) Too often, the game is raunchy just for the sake of being raunchy, without any cleverness to actually make its off-color gags funny. But the game throws so much at the wall that, while most of it doesn't stick, enough does to make for a good number of laughs, and there's some particularly scathing humor about indie game development and major publishers. What with the danger of being run over as you stroll down the sidewalk or being stomped on by criminals flying around in hover suits, Theftropolis doesn't seem like a nice place to live. It is, however, a pleasure to look at, particularly if you have a soft spot in your heart for 8-bit worlds. The pixelated residents of Theftropolis are a wonderfully diverse bunch. Despite being quite tiny, they have a good deal of personality, thanks to their vibrant colors, their big hair, and jaunty hats--not to mention their expressive animations as they strut down the street, breakdance or otherwise pass the time. The city has at least as much personality as its residents. Everywhere you look, there are references on shop signs and billboards to 80s video games and other pop culture artifacts. For that extra dose of nostalgia, an impressive assortment of color modes lets you make the game look as if it's running on a wide range of 80s gaming and computer hardware; a CGA mode, for example, severely limits the game's color palette and dominates it with blue and purple, recalling the visuals on early Apple computers. There's also a fine selection of borders that can make the game look like it's being played on an old TV, an arcade cabinet, or other setups, with optional scanlines to help sell the illusion. Regardless of your visual preference, the catchy 8-bit music is sure to please, and would have been right at home in an NES game. Unfortunately, as alluring as the city is, getting around Theftropolis isn't always enjoyable. Player moves sluggishly until he gets a bit of momentum going, and although all the vehicles around you are yours for the taking, many of them are too slow to be much fun to drive. Still, there are some speedy little numbers to cruise around in. The two driving control schemes let you select between an option in which you use a button to accelerate and in which pushing left or right turns your vehicle to its left or right regardless of which way you're driving onscreen, and an option in which you push the thumbstick up to move up, down to move down, and so on. This second, far less realistic option allows for more responsive, turn-on-a-dime controls and more enjoyable vehicular shenanigans as a result. (On PC, you also have the option of playing with a keyboard, which works just fine.) The Story mode's 62 stages sometimes reference specific games not only in their plot setups and characters but in their concepts, and this often ends up being a liability. One mission is modeled on Paperboy, for instance, but the controls don't feel anything like Paperboy. They feel like Retro City Rampage, and RCR's controls weren't designed for gameplay like Paperboy's, so the mission doesn't actually capture the feel, or the fun, of Paperboy. Players who are too young to remember Paperboy won't get any joy from the reference, and players who do remember Paperboy will be frustrated by the way the gameplay fails to capture what actually made Paperboy enjoyable. That's a recurring issue throughout Retro City Rampage's story mode. Its attempts to mimic Paperboy, Tapper, Contra and other games usually end up feeling wrong. The one exception is Smash TV, which RCR's controls allow it to passably imitate. Like many 8-bit games, RCR's difficulty is inconsistent, and sometimes quite high. There are times when the challenge is welcome; the final boss fight can be thumb-blistering and rage-inducing, but when you finally get the pattern down, your victory is rewarding, and you come away feeling like, having mastered the battle, you could now win it again and again without breaking a sweat. But at other times, the difficulty is simply unfair. On one mission, for instance, you need to follow the not-so-heroic superhero Biffman across town. The game humorously parodies the commonplace missions in open-world games in which you must tail other vehicles without getting too close or too far away. Player finds the task so boring that you must not only follow Biffman but must also frequently stop for coffee, lest the sheer boredom of the mission put Player to sleep. It's an amusing concept, but frustration arises when you must swing by a drive-thru restaurant. Sometimes, pedestrians mill about in your narrow path. Hit them, and the police are likely to jump on you, resulting in instant mission failure and sending you back to the mission's start. Wait for them to clear out and you lose Biffman, resulting in the same thing. Sure, such difficulty issues occurred often in the 8-bit era, but the extra layer of nostalgia doesn't keep them from being frustrating here. Behold the soothing colors of nostalgia. Behold the soothing colors of nostalgia. But when it sticks to simple rampaging and havoc-wreaking, Retro City Rampage is goofy, cathartic fun. To use weapons, you can either press a button and make use of a lock-on system, or use the right thumbstick to aim and shoot as in a typical dual-stick shooter. There's an enjoyable variety of guns and melee weapons to use. Wild power-ups like speed shoes and unlockable abilities like a ground-shaking super stomp keep the action pleasantly absurd. And outside of the Story mode, there's a good deal to do that benefits rather than suffers from RCR's retro trappings. There are secrets aplenty to discover in the forms of warp pipes to secret areas and cheat codes you can enter, among other things, which makes exploring Theftropolis a rewarding pursuit. You can stop by Nolan's Arcade to play a few simple but fun arcade games that reward you with content bonuses if you do well. And there are dozens of pick-up-and-play challenges which give you a quick burst of outrageous carnage and allow you to compete for a high score on the leaderboards. A Minecraft-inspired big head mode is among Retro City Rampage's discoverable secrets. A Minecraft-inspired big head mode is among Retro City Rampage's discoverable secrets. You can also customize your character with a vast assortment of faces, tattoos and hairstyles, many of which have clever references worked into them. (Get the "Dennis Kooper" cut and you can finally live the dream of having hair like Dennis Hopper had when he played King Koopa in Super Mario Bros.!) Unfortunately, the in-game map doesn't show the locations of shops, so locating the barber shop or other store that had the particular cosmetic item you're looking for can take some time, until you have the lay of the land memorized. Finally, there's the Free Roam mode, in which you can cavort around Theftropolis as Player or a number of other unlockable characters. Retro City Rampage is a good amount of game for your $15, and if you're old enough to remember the 80s, its shortcomings will be outweighed by the pleasures of jacking cars, spotting references, and discovering secrets in its enticing 8-bit city. It's appropriate that there are so many time travel references in Retro City Rampage. Like the cold response Marty McFly got from his failed attempt to introduce 80s-style guitar licks to the people of the 1950s, a game like Retro City Rampage might have been too much for players of the 1980s to handle. But now, its time has come, and it's well worth experiencing, warts and all. System Requirements CPU: Info. CPU SPEED: 1 GHz. RAM: 256 MB. OS: Windows XP/Vista/7. VIDEO CARD: Pixel Shader 2.0 and Vertex Shader 2.0. PIXEL SHADER: 2.0. VERTEX SHADER: 2.0. SOUND CARD: Yes.

Welcome