Erdrick The Hero

I haven't touched DQH1 in years, hardly even gave DQH2 a look. I'd be much more inclined to play if I had it with me wherever I go. (That said, they aren't my top priority, I've got to finish XIS in both modes first, and I haven't even played that in a bit. Been on a shooter binge lately, which is oddly peculiar as I normally don't enjoy FPS games that much.)

So recently, I've been having problems with my computer. At first, I thought my GPU was dead, as I came back to my computer after about an hour away, and the image was stretched horizontally and tinted green. After turning off the machine, I could not get it to show video, or (judging by the lack of PC speaker beeps) even POST. Fast forward a couple days, I'm dead angry about not having a computer to use, so I desparately tear down the entire machine and rebuild it. To my astonishment, it worked! I left it running for a few days with no issue. Tonight, I try to play a game that's stored on my secondary HDD, only to realize that the disk isn't mounted. Quickly I check Windows' Disk Management utility, to find that the disk isn't even recognized. I try rebooting, and... it doesn't POST. I open the computer and find that I had forgotten to connect the SATA data cable for the missing drive to the motherboard - d'OH! I connected it and tried turning on the computer again. It still doesn't POST. I reseated the GPU a few times, checking it's power cable, trying to boot the machine after each attempt... It still won't post. Then I remember that I found a couple buttons directly on the motherboard last time I worked on it. One labelled "PWR" and one labelled "Mem OK!". I figured that the "PWR" button was just an alternate power switch (I guess for caseless builds?) - this was true. I'm not entirely sure what the "Mem OK!" button does, but it appears to be related to the RAM. Perhaps it forces the machine to ignore memory errors. PRESSING THIS BUTTON CAUSES THE MACHINE TO POST AND BOOT. So does removing the RAM and replacing it. However, the machine will not POST a second time unless the button is pressed again, or the RAM is replaced again. This leads me to believe that one of my RAM sticks is faulty. However, running Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool doesn't detect any problems (possibly related to "Mem OK!"?). Anybody here experienced enough to confirm or deny that this is definitely a RAM issue? I'm kind of hoping that's all it is, because replacing the RAM will be much cheaper than replacing the GPU. Thanks!

This may be blasphemous, but I think I'll be getting Halo MCC on PC before I pick up any version of Builders 2. Had Microsoft not swooped in with that, I probably would have got Builders 2 PC next.

13:52

Except I have less than $5 to my name so I don't get to partake in Black Friday deals.

My graphics card and my television both just died within 10 minutes of each other. THANKS. I hate the holidays. Nothing good ever comes from them.

Is Photobucket the company that bought out tinypic? This is the definition of a monopoly.

Hey @GrandAlchemist your signature image is blury with a photobucket watermark, just so you know. Thanks, Frankie, whomever you are!

Really? I've found that the Heroes games don't feel very optimised even on a powerful computer, but DQ11 actually runs playably (though with the settings cranked way down and occasionally stutters) even on hardware that doesn't meet it's minimum system requirements. Of course, that depends on your particular hardware, but still, I'm surprised. Either way, DQXIS on Switch is where it's at. Super stoked for the Builders 2 PC release. Better support 4K60 outta the box. While it would be dope to see a modding community for Builders 2, I'm more interested in extracting assets from the game. The builders games are just a goldmine for HD resources that could be used for fan games.

I don't recall and my Switch is currently indisposed. Speaking of which, I just dumped all the files from the game. Unfortunately 90% of them (or more) are *uasset or *uexp, which I can only assume are unreal engine container files. I do have Unreal Engine installed, but don't know the first thing about identifying the individual files. I can, however, make note that there are files relating to the Voice Drama DLC left over in the English/Multi5 version. I can't tell if they could be usable or not, though.

Found this in my Google Drive and felt like sharing: I created this logo for the fan translation, although they chose a different one for the patch.

Current playthrough is 2D vanilla. I have Gigaslash, but found it didn't hit often in that fight.

The DQIX remake should be built on Unreal in the style of XI Unreal. I say this because XI is based on X in terms of mechanics, and X's mechanics are basically just improved versions of IX's. If it weren't for the fact that Unreal is clearly much more of a graphical powerhouse than X's engine, I'd just say build it on top of X.

I've been downloading the Halo Master Chief Collection all week and it's still only 76% done with Halo 2. Internet here sucks. D;

As a DQ player, I honestly hate puns being crammed in everywhere. DQ9 can burn in a fire until someone comes along and re-localizes it. As someone who has actually helped to (unofficially) localize a few DQ games... I totally understand that sometimes the urge to pun is just too great to overcome. It's hard to reconcile these two view points as a single person. I guess I do enjoy some good wordplay. But puns are the scraps at the bottom of the barrel. Only when they sound natural to say and hear in context and also strictly adhere to the meaning of the original source text while also being clever should they be used. That said, I love it when these games use alliteration or rhyming to add flavor. Honestly, I'd love to see Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) write an English DQ script. I feel his style would be incredibly on-brand for the series while also not getting cheesy. But I don't even know if he plays video games. Most of the puns that are particularly memorable to me have already been mentioned, but here's one that hasn't: Count Uptaten of Uptaten Towers. This is one I actually like, as it wasn't obvious. It wasn't until my third playthrough of V DS that I even knew it was a pun, and it had to be pointed out by someone else. Until then, I had always thought to pronounce Uptaten as "up-tay-ten". One other thing I feel like mentioning, while not really a pun, is the city of Al Balad (pardon my spelling, it's foreign and I don't have an example in front of me) in DQ7. This was called Dune in the PS1 version. While I prefer the name Dune (to me it just sounds cooler, maybe it's nostalgia), I have to give credit where credit is due: the new localization gets this one more accurate! In Japanese, Dune and Dune Palace are just known as the "Desert City" and "Desert Palace", with no actual names. Well, "Al Balad" actually just means "The City" in (I might have the next part wrong) Arabic. (Dune was probably chosen in the original because it was only 4 letters, making it fit in the Return menu without resizing.) I actually love the incorporation of other languages and dialects in the modern DQ localizations, but feel it could be done better. For example, in DQ4's Straithbale, the citizens say "bairns" rather than "children". I think it's neat when different parts of the world use varied language. However, while having matching accents for these dialects is great where the games are voiced, I don't need to read "Hoo aboot this", it's just distracting and sometimes hard to understand. Just spell things right for God's sake. On a similar note, if a character slips into their localized "native" language, don't repeat it in English every time. If a character says, "Lo siento" it's redundant for them to immediately say "I'm sorry". I get this is there for people who may not know the foreign expression, but either choose to naturally weave in these "native" interjections so that they can easily be learned through context, or COMMIT TO TRANSLATING TO THE ACTUAL TARGET LANGUAGE. Either way works great, but together they sound dumb, and a little patronizing. Wow, that was kind of a ramble, but I guess that's tradition here on the Den.