The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

try "width = 100%" and delete the height parameter, so...

<img src="images/banner.jpg" width="100%" />

However, with a 1000px wide image, maybe something like:

<img src="images/banner.jpg" width="100%" max-width="1000" />

would look better so you don't get artifacts of stretching the image on larger screens.

You are a god among men. It worked!

It doesn't look like max-width is working. Maybe it doesn't work inline. Oh well. Maybe add "1000px" (and don't forget the space after " and before />) ... maybe you'll have to add it to your style.css sheet, but i'm not entirely sure.

Maybe change your #banner div to:
width: 100%;
max-width: 1000px;

?

Joey, try:

<img src="images/banner.jpg" style="width: 100%; max-width: 1000px;" />

if you actually want a maximum width to the image to be capped at 1000px.

Amazon 12 Days of Deal

Today is deals for the "Gamer"

AC: Syndicate is 29.99 and so is the hidden blade gauntlet prop for any cosplayers/collectors out there: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XJE3S2G/

Works pretty well. I haven't published it since my last post, but I've been tweaking every other page. That was one of the biggest issues I had.

The two Main Assassinations in the Jack the Ripper DLC are good.

They're large areas full of guards. They have multiple exits and entrances. They are separate maps from the city of London, which allows them to be more designed experiences than grafting an encounter-design onto an open world map that's already-built. They've got a mood and aesthetic of their own that tells part of their story/atmosphere through the environments Evie goes through.

That and, they seem to reward replays and mastery, but I'll know for sure once I get onto making the two vids for them - which I've decided I do want to do, since they seem that enjoyable to engage Stealthily.

They alone almost make the DLC worth the purchase, if you're okay with paying around 10 dollars per. But that's for other consumers to decide, as the rest of it doesn't do anything particularly new or interesting. I'd be down to just buy Assassination Mission Packs, to be honest, without all the extra fluff... I genuinely, seriously mean that, I'd love it.

Just like, a pack of five Target Assassination/Black Box missions for 10 or 15 dollars per Pack. They don't need context or story beyond what's given in a short pre-mission cutscene, and their environments can tell the rest of their story. No need for an Open World around them, no need for collectibles, just a pack of cool, unscripted Target Assassinations that act like Supplements for the base game.

Anyway, I moved off-topic.

The two Assassinations in JtR that are fully player-driven are just really nice.

In designing the games, I'm pretty sure they design the environment around missions just as much as the other way around. For example, there's a reason most bounty hunt missions only have a few guarded entrances/exits... and it's not because they built the environment then looked for good spots.

In fact, in the lead up to ACIII they talked about how mission design often influenced the making of the environments. "let's put a well there, or a rock here, or make this wall climbable" ... etc

Mission design surely affects environment design, because it has to, but that is likely done after they already have some kind of environment ready, and they make their "second pass" to Edit and make sure all the gameplay fits. That's how I interpret that at present.

Now, even if all that's true, a separate map is still, and always going to be a more designed experience than sections of city, simply because it has absolutely no obligation to feel like it's a part of that same city. It doesn't have to make the same kind of sense, it doesn't have to "fit" or cohere to the same kind of consistency. It allows it to be visually distinct and render only what is necessary for the mission, leaving out anything external to that. All the while, it still feels like part of the same game, just not part of the same city. The loss of variety that came from not having different cities is a huge loss - having different-flavored districts has never successfully replaced that, but these separate maps are nice. It works incredibly well. If you do play those two missions, they feel like some of the only fresh parts of the DLC, and I really, really love that.

That said, maybe they shouldn't even be designing the actual open world cities that way? That runs the risk of making it feel like less of a real place, and more game-y or predictable. I've definitely noticed that all of the Side Quests happen in very particular locations, most of which feel like CopyPastes of each other with mildly differing internal architecture. As opposed to having core gameplay that's so strong it can work in any kind of environment.

I dunno. Those two Main Assassinations are pretty great.

I agree.

My favorite parts of the first 1 city game (Brotherhood) were the Leonardo Machine missions. The one I'm thinking of being Outgunned. Aside from the detection = fail that was so prevalent in that and other games, that environment at the beginning was made only for that mission and was fun to work through.

Daz. Before I go and do it, are there any achievements bound to completing all the carriage races/fight clubs/etc in Syndcate? Would hate to waste my time on boring parts of the game for not much benefit.... already going to have a hard time with all those perks, ha

There are no Trophies/Achieves for completing ALL of them, except for maybe the ones about raising Loyalty. I'm not sure if you need to do different tasks for those or if you can just do one that is tied to an Associate repeatedly. There ARE Trophies/Achieves for completing Three different ones of each Type.
Those are not Hidden, so you can see them in your Trophies/Achieves List.

Any hidden ones I might miss? (spoiler tags okay)

Hidden Trophies: (Not really any spoilers, but tagged anyway.)

None of them are missable, they can all be done at any point, even after you've finished the game, by way of Replaying missions.

so nothing for getting all perks... good...

There is a Visible Trophy called Multitalented which asks you to acquire Ten Perks, but that's nowhere near all of them. It's pretty easy to get, too - some of them are super simple to grind.

pretty sure I have most of them... just don't want to have to grind a few that don't interest me or seem impossible.

that said: this is the first game in a while that I think warrants maps and guides on the site

glyph maps, other collectible maps
guide to perks
guide to achievements

any takers? i mean, I tackled Revelations and the AC3 economy... I suppose I could try something here, if people cared, but I feel someone out there may want to.

In Honolulu for 2 hours. If you were waiting for the right moment, Stabguy, this is it.

Poor, gullible Cheese. He went straight to the Cultural Gardens just as I had planned. He never knew what stabbed him.

I went to the Garden Courtyard, yes.

But I made it safely to Maui. Just finished 2 dives this morning, maybe I'll do more. I'll be here all week.

Office Home & Student 2013 (and 2016) has a traditional license. Office 365 is the subscription bullshit.

Not really. I did a web search and found that you can renew a free trial of Office 365 up to 6 times. That's semi-legal but not a permanent solution. There are free alternatives to Microsoft Office such as LibreOffice.

https://telegram.org/

Ever since a few patches ago, Skype started being the equivalent of wonky, broken junk on my PC. It would lag sometimes, it would freeze other times, it would outright crash on computers STRONGER and BETTER than this one (baffling!)

So my friend told me about this program called Telegram, and I've been using it for like half an hour but my goodness am I in absolute freaking love. Responsive as hell, no bull, hyper customizable, RESPONSIVE AS HELL. Did I mention it was RESPONSIVE AS HELL? This won't matter to most people because I'm willing to wager most people's PCs are quite a bit tougher than mine, but I dunno, it's whatever.

Telegram is freaking great. If you're still on Skype, I recommend you jump ship along with me because it'll make you legitimately happy, how awesome this prog is. It punches the "instant" back into Instant Messaging. It doesn't have Calling or Voice Chat functions like Skype does, so I've kept my Skype PURELY for that reason, but I use Telegram for all my textual chatting purposes.

I am @sparkedsynapse there if anyone wants to chat.

It requires you to sign up with your phone number rather than your e-mail, which I actually found pretty awesome, quick, and convenient. If you do grab it, make sure to go into your Settings and "Set Username" because otherwise no one will be able to find you.

I've heard really good things about Discord. To the point where just about the entire speedrunning community migrated to it from Skype.

Heading back to the mainland today, stabby. Last chance.

Made this yesterday, feel pretty good about it.

i got my first car today.
and as of yet i have not crashed into anything.

cheers!

wait...

It'll happen.

Have you tried driving in it?

i drove it home from the salesplace, roughly 30 - 40 kilometers
that's about it

Is the car still in one piece?

This reminds me of the ViralJudicator incident on ac-maps. One week he gets his dream car (a souped up Honda) and the next week he's in the hospital recovering from a car accident. Rob will remember what happened next. Viral's cousin came on to the AC forums to report on Viral's grave condition. There was much drama that week as we unmasked the cousin as Viral himself. Rob later did a hilarious April Fools parody as stabby's cousin.

it would have been hilarious if i didn't mess it up right at the very start.

and, yes. the car is in one piece.
the thing was that i got my drivers license back in october, but didn't get the car until late january, and in the time between i didn't drive at all. so i wasn't confident in my skills.
now i'm doing much better for the most part.

It's a skill that needs to be constantly refined.

WOW! That's a neat trick.

So I switched my work schedule around this week because I hate sitting in traffic. I used to leave my house at about 7:20 and get to work at about 8am. Then, I would leave between 5 and 530 and it would take me like an hour to get home. I was sick of traffic so decided to start working from 6-3 instead. Now my morning commute is 15 minutes and my afternoon is about 20-25. Save 1+ hours a day sitting in traffic. Additionally, I get more work done when no one is around from 6-8 than I ever did from 330-530. And I basically get it all done before lunch! Also, in the afternoon I have daylight to do yard work, etc. It's very nice. It does make 10 pm feel much later though. Still have to adjust to that.

Also, I got a fish tank for my birthday. Once I put fish in it (it's still cycling) I'll post pictures if anyone is interested.

Tell your fish to get off the bicycle and get in the tank immediately.

And that's why I added the link.

Woot! My tank is cycling properly! Woohoo!

Okay, for those that aren't familiar with the idea of tank cycling and don't want to click on my link above, I'll explain why I'm excited. Why? Well, why not? The last person to reply wins, so there's a reason. Plus, it's biology/chemistry and that's kinda my jam.

In a typical fish tank you have 3 modes of filtration for the water: physical, chemical, and biological.

I'll start with the easy one, physical filtration. Physical filtration simply refers to some barrier that removes large contaminants from the water: excess food, a piece of fuzz that drifted in, a dead shrimp, whatever. A physical barrier can be a sponge, a cartridge, anything that the water is forced to flow through. If it's big enough to get caught on this filter, it will. And that's physical filtration.

Next, chemical filtration. This is the activated carbon in the typical filter cartridge that the companies tell you to change every month (hint: you shouldn't, but I'll touch on why later). Chemical filtration occurs because activated carbon is extremely porous and rogue organic molecules get stuck in the pores through... okay, I'm boring you. Essentially, the carbon takes chemicals/molecules out of the tank water. If the water looks colored or smells, it's time to change the carbon (if you care). Also, this is why if you are treating the fish with a medicine you remove the carbon filter, so the medicine doesn't get removed. Chemical filtration is the least important type of filtration. However, many people swear by the carbon filters, while others never use them.

Finally, biological filtration. This is your bread and butter filtration in a fish tank - the most important type of filtration (in my opinion). Biological filtration consists of bacteria that converts the fish waste (and excess nutrients) to less toxic byproducts. It takes time to grow the right bacteria, but without it, your fish will literally die in its own waste. These beneficial bacteria are on every surface in the tank from the walls to the gravel to the filter cartridges (definitely the filter cartridges). The reason you don't want to switch your filters (unless they are literally falling apart) is because when you do, you are literally throwing away your proper biological filter and it has to restart again. This causes stress on the fish, and maybe even death. The good news is that the bacteria needed for the biological filtration is all around, you just have to grow it. Which brings us to...

The nitrogen cycle in your fish tank. Your fish pees and poops and a major component of this waste is ammonia. Ammonia is toxic to fish. Fish will die if left in levels of 5 ppm (parts per million) for even a relative small amount of time. (That's one teaspoon/5 mL of a 10% industrial ammonia cleaning solution in a 30 gallon/110L tank). The good news is that bacteria can get rid of ammonia for you, converting it nitrites. No more ammonia. However, nitrites are even more toxic to your fish than ammonia itself. However, there is another bacteria (also all around) that can convert nitrites to nitrates. Nitrates are relatively safe for fish; they can tolerate up to 40 ppm nitrates. The only way to reliably remove nitrates is to change the water. This isn't a problem, because your bacteria aren't in the water. (note: if you have live plants, they can suck some of the nitrates out of the water to slow the need for water changes). But how do you grow the bacteria?

There are two ways to grow bacteria:
1 - Get a hardy fish and add it to your tank. It will produce waste, the bacteria will grow. However, if you add too many fish at a time, the waste will build up and kill the fish. This is extremely stressful for a lot of fish, swimming in toxins. This is the "traditional" way, and the reason you are told to only add a few fish at a time to your tank.
2 - Add an ammonia source to the tank (no fish) then let the bacteria grow. You can add pure ammonia solution, or fish food, or a dead shrimp/fish, whatever. Keep feeding the bacteria ammonia until you're ready to add fish. When you are, do a water change to remove the nitrates, then add all the fish you want (assuming you grew enough bacteria).

I went for option 2 - fishless cycling. Better for the fish. More fun to monitor chemistry going on. Can add all the fish at once.

Last Thursday I added 4-5 ppm of an ammonia solution to my tank. I've been monitoring ammonia and nitrites every couple days. It hasn't changed. Until today. Today I now have slightly less than 4ppm ammonia and 0.25ppm of nitrites. Now that I know I've grown the first bacteria, I will monitor the nitrites until they start to come down (making sure to add ammonia for the first bacteria so it doesn't die). Once I can add 3-4ppm of ammonia and in 24 hours see 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites, then I will be ready for fish. This means that I will have enough bacteria to shuttle it all through the cycle in 24 hours so that any waste my future fish produce won't die in their own waste.

tl;dr (learned that one from Calvar) I'm doing chemistry in my fish tank at home and it's finally working. Woot.

A great way to start the day!

Sorry about that, Joey. There's an administrator's tool for deleting spam in bulk. I just gave you access to it! See your private messages for details.

If anyone still wants "Tinidazoe 500 Mg" I can probably make it in lab.

I almost spoiled a surprise birthday party. How it happened was I got messaged about coming there early to set things up, at which I replied that I'll come almost right away. Had I remained on the computer for a little longer I would have seen a new message stating "not yet!".

So there I was, sitting by the front door when the birthday person and friends pulled up. It was tricky, but we managed to come up with a story why I was there, on his birthday, without my car anywhere in sight. Luckily he didn't put two and two together.

Re: fish tank.

It's been up and going (with fish!) for about 2 weeks now if anyone cares for pictures I'll put them up.

I also convinced my wife to let me do a second tank just for dwarf shrimp! woot! this means that I can breed them and add them to my current tank. Then when they breed again I can sell them on craigslist and get a nice little side cash flow going.

You'd be a fish pimp, then?

This is basically how Insaniquarium works.

Nah man. More of a puppy farm.

Backyard breeder.

I mean, I could underfeed them and get them to fight. Take bets. That sorta thing.