Forum Announcement - URL Change

Recently Proboards (the people who host the forum) have upgraded the forum's url by taking out the number

So instead of the old url with the number in it - lanotte.proboards102.com

It is now lanotte.proboards.com so if you have the forum bookmarked or are linked to it from your website/blog it would be best to upgrade it.

The old url should redirect you to the new one but it's best to update it just in case.


Raven

The Devil's Number In Posts

Today the Night Mistress (aka Raven aka the admin or that would be me) has put on her thinking, spontaneous, playing hat (I know, it's a lot of titles for one hat) and has come up with an idea!

When a member reaches 666 posts, if they can take a screen shot of it and then post it to the forum, they will get karma points!

Why do I want karma points for? I hear you ask.

Because you'll look super cool of course, why else?! Ok I'm sure I'll come up with something awesomer later on but for now being awesome and too cool for school is, well, awesome....

So get cracking, get posting and go play.

Thread linkage

Dead Space - Game Review

I don't usually play shooter games. I mainly play games that involve swords or blades of some type. Actually I think the last time I played an actual shooter game all the way through was Resident Evil when Playstation 2 wasn't even in existence yet. Other then that I've played a few here and there but only parts of it (when others are playing) and nothing I ever planned on playing. So this is a bit of a new experience for me in a way and it's an experience I'm enjoying thoroughly. Apart from giving me a headache Dead Space is an awesome game.

The basic story is you're part of a repair crew going into deep space to find a ship (The USG Ishimura) to repair because it has lost radio contact. Clarke (our character) is also on a personal mission after receiving a personal message from a member of the rogue ship. When the crew arrive there seems to be something a bit suss going on, especially seeing as there is no flood lights on and there is no radio contact at all. So your ship tries to dock in with Ishimura only for it all to go wrong and your own ship becomes damaged leaving you stranded on the Ishimura. You get separated from your crew mates and end up having to do a series of semi missions to get everything going again.

Being in the horror genre you'd expect a lot of dark ambience and it delivers. I think that's one of my favourite parts of the game. There is blood and gore all over the ship, smeared on floors where people have either crawled after being attacked or have been dragged. Words written in blood on the walls. Blood splatter and smears on the wall as well. Dismembered bodies strewn around and not always the whole body to put together. Cadavers in body bags with flies buzzing around (and you can hear them really well). Broken furniture, windows and basically the whole place has been trashed. Big holes ripped in the walls in some places which makes you wonder at the sheer size of whatever created it (I was grabbed by one and it was brilliant). Then you find people and can't always help them. It's like they don't know you're there and they partake in really odd behaviour which is so unexpected and disturbing.

Another thing that adds to the ambience is lights. The lights are on sometimes and then other times they flicker so you can hardly see anything. Other times still they aren't on at all or they go off all of a sudden and you can't see anything but you can hear things. With the combination of the music (which is excellent and greatly atmospheric), the odd creaks and groans from the ship, your movements and breathing, you also get noises from the odd creatures that have infested the ship. Sometimes you hear them breathing, sometimes you hear them running in the air vents and other times you get to hear just how squishy they are when they're dead and you kick or step on them.

I love the creatures. You find out pretty quickly that just shooting them will not kill them. You have to dismember them or else they keep coming for you and even then if you only shoot off their legs they will still keep coming for you. They have blade like appendages for their arms and they'll drag themselves to you all the while snarling and making horrible wet noises. Add to that your breathing can get ragged and if the lights are out it seems sometimes there might be more then one lurking in the dark but you can't always be sure. Those are just the main creatures. There are other ones that are smaller (like the babies) and bigger ones and ones you have to make sure you kill if you're in a room full of corpses.

To go with slaughtering the monsters you get some awesome weapons. I thought the line gun was cool but last night I got the Ripper which is a remote controlled chain saw sort of gun. It dispenses a chain saw disc and you not only cut off limbs but hack the shit out of those bastards.

There's other cool things but you can find out for yourself.

Now I know I react oddly to creative violence. Rather then squealing and screaming like an idiot (that's what chicks are meant to do right? Scream and hold someone's hand and then go home and have nightmares?) in pure terror. I giggle. I laugh. I exclaim how "f*cking awesome" a cool effect is or particular type of violent act is (like in a movie I watched years ago, one of the characters got sliced in half with glass and you got to see all the entrails). When I'm surprised of course I swear in surprise but it's not an upset sort of swearing but a "this is brilliant" swearing. I swear in glee.

So basically, with this whole game so far, I have laughed, giggled and sworn in pure delight. I highly recommend playing it.

Problems Accessing The Forum

I don't know how long this has been going on but I have noticed this isn't rare lately.

Earlier I tried to access the forum and rather then going directly to it I was shown an Invalid URL page. Something I thought was a tad odd seeing as I'd only been on the forum about an hour beforehand.

I've checked out the Proboards Support forum to see if anyone else had the same problem and apparently they have. I don't know if it has anything to do with updates to the servers etc but I found a solution.

If you ever have this problem try the address without the number. Have it as http://lanotte.proboards.com instead of with the 102. Works fine after that.


If at any time you have trouble accessing the forum please let me know by either leaving a message here or emailing me at lanotteforum@gmail.com

Otherwise if you have any questions and can access the forum there is a thread to post in.


Thank you
Raven