Coincidence? If you take the Thelio Massive page and put every single thing you can in your system on that page, it costs 76 thousand dollars!

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Quoting: tmtvl

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMost computer cases are ugly as sin. Just wondering--are you saying it's ugly because of the woodgrain or despite it? Personally, I really think it's past time design in computers got over the whole "We're so hypermodern and futuristic" thing, so the woodgrain is kind of welcome.

The wood grain definitely doesn't help, but I'm mainly talking about the "black monolith with a white button" look. Add some relief, dangit. How do you even open the DVD drive on those things?

And the light wood variant is the most kitschy thing I've seen since the '70s.

I may have to post in the Tacos/Atari VCS/AtariBox/AtacoBox thread over at Atari Age about these wood grain wonders.

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Quoting: m0nt3

Quoting: tmtvlI mean, it's ugly as sin, so if I bought one I'd have to buy a proper case as well...

...but I so want a Sys76 with an AMD GPU.

Looks like you can get a Ryzen CPU and a RX 550 or RX 580 with the Thelio. I really want them to have a Ryzen Laptop.

This ^^ I'm in the middle of trying to decide which laptop to buy. I'm leaning toward a Thinkpad P52 due to them still having the best keyboard you can get on a laptop. Everyone else uses stupid chicklet keys, which I can't stand to type on.

The Oryx Pro does look pretty tempting already though.

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Quoting: kaiman

Quoting: slaapliedjeI actually quite liked IX, but you could tell where the story fell flat.

I think both VIII and IX were rushed out the door way before they were ready for release. So definitely EA to blame. As a result, VIII feels like they cut most of the content, just to get it done, while IX was decent enough, but with a terrible story.

Quoting: slaapliedjeDidn't Richard Garriott leave after 7 though?

From what I remember, Origin Systems was acquired by EA after the release of Ultima 7. Garriott didn't leave until they shut down Origin. Sometime after Ultima IX. I'm pretty sure he was involved with all the Ultimas.

Quoting: slaapliedjeUltima Online 2 being cancelled was the biggest EA travesty and I kind haven't really bought many games from them since then. Somehow UO is still going strong, but I recently tried it in Linux with Wine and it failed hard.

I'm not into online games, so can't really comment on anything going on with UO. But I'm glad I didn't put any money into Shroud of the Avatar when it was on Kickstarter. Though at least that one runs natively on Linux.

Ultima IX was delayed and the engine redone like 3 or 4 times, it has almost as bad a development history as Duke Nuke'em Forever. It was though one of the early 3D accelerated titles (so early it originally only worked with software rendering or 3Dfx, and Direct3D was added in a later patch.) I thought the game was amazing, but yeah there were parts where the story was just missing the things they wanted to do, but ran out of time.

Ha, I recently watched a video about UO. They had planned out this full ecology for the world. Rabbits for example would eat the plants of a region, but be slowed down due to the wolves eating the rabbits, etc. But then when they let players get online, they just instantly went out and slaughtered everything, making all that work of making the world realistic completely pointless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE [External Link]

I bought Shroud of the Avatar, haven't had much time to play it, but the online seems much like UO, especially the houses everywhere so you can't move bit.

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I didn't notice that Orion removed Alice's Mom's Rescue. That game was released for the Jaguar and the Falcon, so why he wouldn't support it on Linux.....

He tried a kick starter for his game tools to create games, and because he didn't advertise enough, he bailed on it and dropped out of the community...

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Quoting: kaiman

Quoting: slaapliedjeSome of the EA games for the Atari 8bit / c64 were some of the best around. If only they still published the Ultima games...

After ruining Ultima VIII and IX before shutting down Origin Systems?! ... no thank you!

It's not quite coincidence that a pair of villains in Ultima VII went by the names Elizabeth and Abraham. Or that the evil artefacts resembled a cube, sphere and tetrahedron.

The final EA game I bought has been Dragon Age: Origins, and that only grudgingly because of the online activation and day 1 DLC. I've got a list of companies I don't buy from, and EA is one of them.

To be fair I honestly think THAT is the time frame Electronic Arts became shitty. The re-designing of Ultima IX # different times was insane. The initial look of it was more on par with Neverwinter Nights, which came out years later. That one can be faulted to EA. Ultima VIII... well not sure who had the idea to use another game engine to slap Ultima into.. But Crusader games was a bad choice for it. Terrible 3D platformer is not what it should be. I actually quite liked IX, but you could tell where the story fell flat. Didn't Richard Garriott leave after 7 though? Ultima Online 2 being cancelled was the biggest EA travesty and I kind haven't really bought many games from them since then. Somehow UO is still going strong, but I recently tried it in Linux with Wine and it failed hard.

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Quoting: oldrocker99

Quoting: slaapliedjeWhat would have been nice is a multi-character mod of some sort. So you could play through the modules that require more than one character without actually needing more than one player. Yeah I know, anti-social, but still... :P

Actually, the game has always had controllable companions; since Shadows of Undrentide. It certainly has in Hordes of the Underdark.

Ha, I totally forgot about that, they were added later than the original release. But I think you could only have one, right? When I was playing a Wizard, I just used my Pixie familiar to detect traps and pick locks. Very useful!

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: lejimster

Quoting: GuestWell that's cool, if EA ever recovers from their current state of being a pure and utter garbage company that can't produce any decent games anymore......

EA have always been garbage. I had the "pleasure" of experiencing it first hand when I was in game development.

Its a shame really because they've ruined great studios over the years.

EA has not always been garbage, EA did not start out as garbage. EA was a good company in the 80s and 90s, and a decent company until 2008 or so where they started going noticably fast downhill. Sure they managed to kill some great studios by then, but they were publishing really good games (at least mostly) until then.

They started declining so fast in 2008 however that they have not managed to release a single good game since ~2010.

Some of the EA games for the Atari 8bit / c64 were some of the best around. If only they still published the Ultima games...

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So I bought the bundle for all the extra stuff, so I have keys for RPG Maker MV, XP and the Ace one. Probably some others as well if someone wants to PM me for them.

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What would have been nice is a multi-character mod of some sort. So you could play through the modules that require more than one character without actually needing more than one player. Yeah I know, anti-social, but still... :P

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