#i also have a trackpad and not a mouse/tablet so the line was difficult

[tawaifeddiediaz]

how did u draw the line in your new set, and do u mind telling what font u used?

hey nonnie:

the line is just a brush, i drew it by hand and lined it up and all. (make sure to turn smoothening on to 100% or you're gonna have wonky lines like i do hehe)

and i don't keep the psds after i post them, so i think it was this font: dark signature (?)

#zee answers #zee's giffing process #i also have a trackpad and not a mouse/tablet so the line was difficult #in retrospect shayad i could've done it better but alas #a girl was eggshausted

[kleptonancydrew]

MID Thoughts

So I’m not one of the people with the thought process for typing out a cohesive review so you’ll be catching my train of thought. Sorry.

One of the big things I have noticed in the reviews is that if you like talking to characters you are much more likely to enjoy the game. Talking to people and cutscenes (with rare exceptions) have always been my least favourite part of Nancy Drew games. So for me the major uptick in dialogue and cutscenes made the game miserable. (And yes you can skip them - but on the first play through you want to know what’s going on.) Also the captions need to be fixed before the next game - let me see the whole thing please. 

I enjoy the historical aspects of the game. I took two courses relating to the history of witchcraft in uni so a lot of this actually took me back to my Witchcraze class. There was a lot to learn but I was disappointed with the museum - it feels like we could have had several more displays. I also don’t love the way they take text from things and then put it into a tiny straight forward display. I know that for some this might help and it should be included but the control for it should be elsewhere - not in the center of the page when I’m trying to turn pages. 

The tour thing should have more clear. The tablet thing took a tick to figure out. As should the offering things to people. In previous games you have to talk to people to exchange objects and I got stuck for a bit. 

Maybe the controls are better if you are playing with a mouse but like many adults I rely on laptops exclusively. The whole right click thing was very difficult. As a somewhat petulant side note - I have a touchscreen laptop and previous games have all been pretty touchscreen friendly for most things. This game was not touch screen friendly at all. Something minor is that why did they get rid of the magnifying glass cursor - would that really have been so hard to integrate? It is fitting and cute. 

I wish a line had been dropped (maybe it was and I missed it) about how just because something is herbal and all natural that does not mean that it is good for YOU. People are all different and herbal remedies can have major side effects based on personal health. They can also screw with any modern medicines you take. Some can also interact poorly when you are using multiple. And if you don’t have the issue that something is treating that can also cause problems. I know most of us here are adults (I’m pretty sure most everyone here who wasn’t when MID was announced certainly is now), but like kids also play this game and I don’t want them getting medical advice from Nancy Drew. 

(Also maybe a line about how yes we don’t burn ‘witches’ anymore but satanism is still bad and magic isn’t real.) 

Alicia’s comments about Jason and him being attractive were really uncomfortable. I’m a teacher and I go through so many protect the young ‘ins things that this was really setting off all my alarm bells. I know he’s supposed to be over eighteen but so are some of my seniors - does not make it okay in my book. 

The plot was fine - good intrigue and was interesting. Some of it was weird but was explained by poisoning. Some parts were very confusing to me. I have no idea how anyone got underground. How could a teenager just leave their cell phone and peace out (well actually I did have to run out of the school the other day to find a kid who forgot their phone at the end of the day). I did like the scare in the bed - that was cool. 

Making the pancakes was fun - I wish you had to switch up the recipes for the special pancakes, that would be more fun in my book. The herbal stuff wasn’t really complicated after you got the first couple done. 

I didn’t really think much of the puzzles. Based on the way I played through (maybe different if I go again) they were all clumped up towards the very end. 

I didn’t love a lot of the personalities in the games. But, I rarely do so whatever. 

I’ve posted before about how the navigation feels like kayaking in DDI - you need to be in exactly the right place to get where you want to go and it takes forever to do so. I found the town center and the museum really difficult to navigate in particular. 

Maybe I’m stupid and never quite understood the laurel in the mirror thing - was that supposed to be some type of Lauren look here? Remember how Josiah Crowley put his will in a safety deposit box at a bank - what ever happened to doing that? Or one of those fireproof lock boxes? Also was there any point to the bedroom at either house? Besides the one weird dream and Teegan’s photo? 

Also I didn’t like how things kept saying the same thing when you accidentally clicked on them - like I know that has been a thing historically but it’s still annoying. 

Also what was with all the papers and stuff on the floor and spread everywhere constantly? I’m a mess and my organization is accomplished by making piles everywhere but even I’m not nearly that bad. 

Also, much like TOT - it’s really obvious who the thief is right away. 

Another thing is that like, did HER even make this game? No. If I wanted a game from another company I’d give them money. I turn to HER because they have previously had a history of turning out two decent if not fabulous games a year. 

I like having more places to explore. I dislike that they take so long to load. Even the game startup takes forever compared to other games. 

The lip syncing is really annoying - it seemed like they had fixed that over a decade ago. Also the text and dialogue didn’t match. I am someone who always has captions on things and having them so off is irritating. 

TBH I didn’t really feel like the Hardy Boys added much to this game. 

Also the whole Carson is friends with the Judge guy reminded me of how I greatly dislike my dad’s so called best friend. Just because a dad is willing to overlook some people’s faults doesn’t mean the daughter is. 

Also, the continued mention of Salem being like some sort of small town where everyone knows everyone is so out of place with our knowledge that this does take place in 2019 (or around this time). Salem has a population of over 40 thousand according to the Google. My hometown is somewhere just under 30 thousand which I considered small town, until I moved to the midwest where it is apparently bigger than most cities. I’m not saying someone cannot be a known entity in a town that size (high school sports in America make plenty of teenagers decently known in towns), I’m saying that there should be enough going on in that town that someone else has caused trouble since. The only reason I remember the name of the kid who got hit walking home from school causing the town to put in a very inconvenient traffic light is because we went to the same uni in a different state and he got kicked out twice. (I crossed that stupid highway everyday with zero issues, probably even on the same day he got hit.) I was gonna say something about modern education systems working on bleeding out such backwards thinking but then I remember that we’re literally graduating nazis so like, nvm. (My personal goal as a teacher is to contribute to eliminating innocent ignorance - kids aren’t born knowing things and the adults in their lives need to work on introducing them in positive ways to avoid the distrust, fear, and hatred that stem from ignorance.) 

Maybe if they fix the navigation and optimize it better for the vast majority of the population who use laptops with trackpads (I don’t have a desk where the hell am I supposed to put a mouse?) it could nice for the next game. But they also need to work on the character animation and other issues. But then like, do we even know there will be a next time? I know Little Jackalope’s positive media minions have said so. But they also said 2016. And October. And any number of other things that might have been said in good faith but ended up not being true.   

I think I just feel meh about everything. This was not the best game ever, and yeah maybe SCK and STFD had some pretty bad graphics too - but it’s twenty years later, I was hoping we’d be moving forward not back. If you want a really positive review look elsewhere. I’m still committed to HER but I realised the other day that very few of my newer friends/coworkers know how obsessed I have always been with HER because I’ve had nothing to talk about. It sorta feels like I’ve lost a part of my personality. 

Also the physical copy cover is real shitty. I feel like that 100% could have been fixed if more attention was payed. You can’t even see the name of the game. 

#Midnight in Salem #MID spoilers #sorry for subjecting you to my stream of consciousness #I'm tired and have eaten nothing but junk food #Go Navy #Beat Army

[coldstarlightharmony-blog]

Survey: Acer Aspire R7 tries truly difficult to address needs nobody has Awkward frame consider and aimless outline abandon us befuddled and unsatisfied.

"Infomercial gives." It's an expression my significant other and I use to portray the stance and expression that appears in the start of most infomercials—the ones that begin with expressions like, "Are you felt burnt out on of not having the capacity to pour your pop like an ordinary person?" It's constantly joined by film of individuals hurling their hands in disturb in the wake of neglecting to fulfill undertakings that the greater part of us can manage with no issues.

The Acer Aspire R7 gives me infomercial hands. Always.

I get that PC OEMs are confronting diminishing edges as non-customary figuring gadgets keep on gaining notoriety, and I get that there's shareholder weight to think about the following enormous thing in the compact space with a specific end goal to keep income up and hit the quarterly direction. However, the Aspire R7 is lamentably not the following enormous thing. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination beyond any doubt what it is, truly, or what its objective market is, or what specific undertaking or errands it should exceed expectations at that different gadgets don't as of now improve.

What hath Acer fashioned?

We got a few hands-on time with the Acer Aspire R7 back toward the beginning of May, when Ars Senior Products Specialist Andrew Cunningham called it "the most bizarre convertible PC we've ever observed." Having spent two or three weeks with the gadget, I can approve that. In the hours I've spent utilizing it, I never became completely OK with its format and capacity, and I came to disdain its weight and general disagreeableness.

The Aspire R7 is a convertible, that charlatan item class that ended up noticeably famous with OEMs after the dispatch of Windows 8. It includes an expansive 15.6" touchscreen mounted on a twofold jointed pivot, called the "Ezel Hinge" by Acer's advertisers. The Ezel pivots at both closures, enabling the screen to be raised, brought down, and turned. The R7 utilizes its huge pivot to change over between a customary portable workstation like appearance, a console improved tablet-like appearance, an upheld tablet, and a full hand-held tablet.

The way that the gadget has certain set "modes" into which you should change it isn't promptly evident at to start with, thus Acer has invested a considerable amount of energy guaranteeing that clients see how the R7 functions. Its site contains various livelinesss demonstrating the R7 happily flipping forward and backward; the gadget likewise accompanied a pack-in bit of paper graphically clarifying its diverse designs. New clients can even tap on a video on the distinctive modes inserted in the Task Bar for reference.

Putting aside the pivot and its suggestions for a minute, the R7 is positively not terrible equipment. It has a double center 1.8GHz Ivy Bridge Core i5-3427U, a low-voltage 22nm CPU with hyperthreading, and a maximum evaluated TDP of 17 watts. It has 4GB of welded in RAM, and the setup we assessed accompanied its one RAM space loaded with a 2GB SODIMM, yielding an odd-yet not-awful aggregate of 6GB. Its coordinated Intel HD 4000 GPU is consummately satisfactory for non-bad-to-the-bone gamer utilization. We would have gotten a kick out of the chance to see the new Haswell CPUs show up, yet Ivy Bridge isn't an awful performer.The portable PC/convertible/whatever-we're-calling-these-things characterizes robustness; it's 5.29 lbs of aluminum, plastic, and glass. The Ezel Hinge and its hostage touchscreen need even a small piece of tumble or play—the screen moves with adjusted expert on the pivot and the pivot thusly turns against the portable workstation base with without squeak smoothness. The screen stayed precisely at whatever edge I situated it without moving up or down. Truth be told, now and again it required maybe a lot of push to move the screen, and I'd wind up moving the whole tablet around on its little elastic feet. In any case, I'd much rather have a pivoted show like this sprung on the firm side than free to move around at will side.

The show itself is huge and brilliant. The IPS board underpins entirely expansive survey edges, which is vital on the grounds that the R7's shape-changing plan implies that the screen is probably going to be seen from a wide assortment of separations and positions. The LED backdrop illumination was even and with no conspicuous problem areas or dying. Its 10-point capacitive touch layer additionally gave me no issues—it reacted to touches and drags promptly with no observable lag.Unexpectedly, I like the console. I end up detesting most island-style consoles, however this current one's very decent. The keys require a modest measure of push to discourage and after that in a split second plunge their full short length to hit rock bottom definitively. There's no feeling of mush, thank heavens. What's more, the backdrop illumination, however it seeps out from under the keys, is to a great degree splendid at its maximum setting.There are likewise some reasonable estimated (for a convenient) speakers on the base of the gadget—a couple of 2W "Dolby Home Theater" marked grilles. The sound leaving them sounded very clear at low-to-medium volume. I don't know that slapping a "Dolby Home Theater" mark on them implies you'd need to utilize them to tune in to a motion picture at full volume, however for easygoing tuning in to gushed sound, they were splendidly fine.That is tragically the finish of the positive things I need to say in regards to this gadget. In every day utilize it performed enough, however it certainly wouldn't win any honors for speed. I didn't try running any organized benchmarks since Ivy Bridge is an altogether known amount now; the greater part of its equipment is as of now all around reported. (You can check our Asus ZenBook Prime and 2013 MacBook Air surveys for hard numbers on the off chance that you need them.)

The absence of a SSD for its essential working framework didn't make as large of an effect as I thought it would—at any rate, not at first. The R7 accompanies a 500GB 5400 rpm hard circle drive, however it's expanded with a 24GB mSATA SSD that capacities as a reserve for the working framework boot documents and for oftentimes got to applications. Subjectively, it was slower than utilizing a SSD yet considerably quicker than utilizing only the hard circle drive—which I got the chance to take in a ton about.

In any case, to begin with, we should discuss the R7's flippy screen and pivot. The issue with the R7 is that in spite of the fact that it has four essential "structures," it's not especially helpful in any of them—similar to how Astrotrain wasn't a decent space transport, prepare, or robot.The R7 is a terrible fit for a customary note pad—truth be told, a few outline decisions make the gadget exceedingly disappointing to utilize. The way that it weighs very nearly five and a half pounds (that is around 2.4 kg) makes carrying it around a clear errand. In all actuality, it's not as substantial as the 7.7 lb HP Elitebook 8770w, however the Elitebook was a scaled down CAD workstation with gobs of CPU and GPU and RAM—the R7 is an average spec semi-versatile.

In the wake of pulling the R7 to Starbucks, the topsy turvy plan of the console and trackpad immediately made me surrender portable PC mode. The trackpad is arranged over the console, and the console is about flush with the front edge of the tablet. This prompts two issues: to begin with, with the R7 in my lap, I couldn't locate an open to writing position. Mousing was also disappointing, since the main place to rest hand or arm while working the trackpad is decisively on the console. Prompt infomercial hands.

Ezel mode

Along these lines, I changed the portable workstation (ch-ch-ch-ch-ch) to its "Ezel mode," where it would seem that a console prepared tablet.The rationale for situating the trackpad over the console turns out to be clear: it's so you can pull the screen forward this way and utilize the R7 as a tablet-with-console. This doesn't change the way that the console is as yet disappointing to use with no considerable separation amongst it and the front edge of the portable PC, yet it does in any event spare you from the trackpad.As an interface gadget, the touchscreen worked fine. Windows 8 remained Windows 8, with all the great and awful that suggests. I gave working in this design a genuine go, however most of the assignments I needed to do included working not in touch-accommodating Metro tile arrive but rather at the order line and in non-Metro customary applications. Only utilizing the touchscreen to connect with non-Metro applications was exceptionally all in or all out—not each tap went where I implied for it to go. Infomercial hands.

Show mode

That night, I sat down at the kitchen table with the R7 while my better half and I watched Archer and gone for the R7 in its "show mode," with the screen gliding noticeable all around held by the pivot and the console confronting far from me. I could see the utilization on the off chance that we'd been really watching Archer on the R7, yet we weren't—we were home, so we were watching it on the significantly bigger TV. I perused the Web for somewhat, looking into Archer trivia as we played through our backlog.This was really the most valuable and regular the R7 had felt in the whole time I'd been utilizing it. Its over the top weight didn't especially make a difference when it was on the table before me, and the screen appeared to skim unequivocally before me, not moving or truly notwithstanding squirming as I tapped it.

Be that as it may, as I perused around, I started to notice irregular things happening. Site pages would re-stack as I was gazing at them; superfluous letters would show up in inquiry fields as I wrote. The mouse cursor would gradually float over the screen and incidentally enlist clicks apparently at irregular.

A suppressed chuckling uncovered the guilty party—my dear spouse was secretively tapping the incidental key or touching the trackpad as I worked. R7 clients observe: when you have the R7 in upheld mode like this, the console and trackpad confront far from you... furthermore, they stay live. Infomercial hands once more.

Tablet mode

The R7 can likewise be utilized as a full tablet, in the event that you are the Hulk or conceivably a gorilla. It is essentially too substantial to hold before you for augmented periods.It additionally doesn't really overlay flush as a tablet either.