LadyCrimson

Downloading FFXV Ardyn DLC - almost done. Nothing else I've bought recently has been super exciting so ... why not. May as well round it all out. Wish it has been Aranea episode tho. Watched a part of the dlc already via Twitch ... expectations are middling. I'll probably like it more than Prompto's DLC but less than Ignis' DLC. Besides, it's mostly just new Ansel fodder, am I right? Right.

The video itself is a little amusing/entertaining, I smiled a few times. Then I scrolled down and read the "top comments" and started lol'ing pretty hard. The internet. Gotta luv it sometimes.

Bought a VN. Tried to play VN. Refuses to run in Offline mode even tho the store page mentions nothing about 'net required. I did install it on E drive instead of C drive, maybe it doesn't like that, but pffft - if I install it on C drive and it's still Online only I may refund it. Installed Shadow/Tombraider. Fraps won't work with it (a lot of games do work with Fraps on Win10 still, but not all). Tried their Photomode. The P or controller key to take picture doesn't work. Meaning you have to use Steam Overlay to take a screen while in Photomode. Tried Ansel. The Ansel menu comes up but controller doesn't work to use it and the high resolution options aren't even there. I'm confuddled. The built-in benchmark test indicated 35-60fps on mostly Ultra + Raytracing shadows etc at 4k. I'm utterly unimpressed with the Ray-shadows. The game itself? I dunno, it doesn't seem anything special. There's QTE moments. There's too many cutscenes. I feel too closed-in visually a lot of the time. I still don't like "tombraiding" in modern 3d space (vs. original games). But Lara's hair, pants and jacket look really good. Edit: Shadow/TR *is* the first game I've owned where it actually gives me the proper PS4 prompts vs. Xbox ones.

I have been having the exact same issue with my 4K LG tv that has a PS4 and an Xbox One X connected to it. With the PS4 it would kind of make sense to have a faulty hdmi cable because I've had that thing since 2014 but the Xbone X is only a year old. I hope it is not the tv. :/ I don't think this would be the issue for you but in my case I think the older cable I had just couldn't handle the extra bandwidth or something like that, that the new 2080rtx wanted to send out while gaming. Or it could at first, then it broke/weakened coincidentally? Dunno. I'd used the same cable to connect TV to the old Win7/980ti and play 30fps/4k with zero issues. If I used Precision to lower the power target of the new GPU from 100 to 50 (so it wasn't sucking up 300w for gaming but only 125w), the black screen/signal drop would occur less or not at all. I don't profess to understand what "power target" entirely means (helps with/is related to OC'ing I think) but whatever it was, lowering it made the old cable not drop signal. The black screen moments wouldn't translate/show to a video recording (game was still running fine), it was only visible on TV itself. A new, $13 hdmi cable = it could handle the default 100 without dropping out. Whatever works.

Shadow of the Tombraider + all the dlc/season pass was on 50% sale so I said what the heck and bought it. Mostly because they finally added a little bit of ray tracing to it and I'm curious about performance. But now I don't feel like downloading/installing 40GB. Maybe tomorrow. Or next weekend.

--4k tv was suddenly going black for 1-2 seconds at random intervals, only when game played. Eventual solution: new heavy duty HDMI cable. --4k tv was now screen tearing pretty badly if I shoved a video/youtube page onto it (didn't occur on main monitor or if I only displayed windows on tv vs. extend). Noticed main monitor was rated for 59hz, thought maybe it might be an issue (not matching 60hz of tv). I want a new monitor anyway. --buy a new 1440 monitor today (nothing special) at Best Buy. At home realize it only has HDMI, no DP. The 2080ti has only a single HDMI port (taken up by TV) and 3 DP. Argh. Why can't nvidia do 2 and 2? Huh? Steal an adapter from hubster. Adapter only allows for 1080 display, so new monitor can't display 1440. --Order a new HDMI to DP adapter. --Wondering what will go wrong/weird next when I install that on Monday. I swear this is what it's been like since I put this rig together. Bad cable, wrong cable, better cable, need adapter, bad cable, wrong cable, over and over! I'm cursed!

Here's one for the dog fans.

Played some more Eastshade. I'm liking the game more and more. I don't think the world will be "massive" or the game super long, but it's enough space to get lost in. As you wander, picking up sticks and plants for making painting canvasses and I know not what else, you encounter huts, people, houses. Some have quests, some have nothing to say (but you can loot their candles and canvas cloth!) ... came across one puzzle, maybe two, didn't try to solve yet. I can't stay out/walk at night (too cold) but I hear somehow you can acquire a jacket that then lets you do so. I need that jacket. I also need a fishing pole and a raft (to get across to a few places), and friend references to get into the big city where one can buy and sell things. I have no idea how to achieve these things, and it doesn't really matter. Just wandering around, and if I do enough quests, maybe they'll like me enough. I did make a father angry enough to punch me, which seemed not likely to make me friends, so I re-loaded. Hee. But it shows that occasionally there are small choices to be made in the game. The graphics aren't really all that uber but the way everything looks kind of like a painting, the light, the weather, it all works to impress the eyeballs regardless. Impressive indie work.

Apparently there's (maybe?) 4 different episode orders, based on no one knows what, . So not everyone is getting the same first episode. https://www.indiewire.com/2019/03/love-death-and-robots-netflix-episode-order-changing-1202052377/

^ *runs to look at the CE forum she occasionally browses* ...yup, god mode and such already made. Dang they're so fast. I wonder what "invisibility" does. Maybe it'd help to get screenshots you can't normally get if enemies don't notice/trigger. :D Hm. Edit: nah, think I'll just watch CohhCarnage play it on Twitch instead, and save myself stress. Plus it's really funny to watch his reactions.

All this talk of game launcher shakeups these days had me rushing to GoG yesterday to download any updated versions of games I already own from them, "just in case." Y'know. Then I bought Diablo1 and Emperor and Caesar4 (city builders) from them on top. I have C4 on disc which works on Win7 but I hear it's hard to get running on Win10 if I ever wanted to play it there. That makes all the city-builders from my past, purchased from GoG now, I think. From Steam, I bought a little game called Eastshade. It's an explore/quest a pretty world type game, only with no enemies to think about. Nicely made.

I'd really love to buy/play Sekiro because it's a setting/look I like. But then I realized it was that fighting type of game tjhat's popular these days and unlike DMC5 wouldn't give me a "u have no precise timing skillz" option. eg, I'd suck at it. Might not even get past the first tutorial boss or whatever I saw someone else refer to. Ha. Sigh. Maybe when it's super cheap on sale. Or if there's a Cheat Engine "god mode" table.

*google* ...wow has it been that many years since hubby and I *had* to see B&T 1 and 2 because of Carlin? And laughing like a loon at Sandler's Death? The faces in that video say yes, but my brain says no.

Eastshade: A little too much bloom effect but it's still pretty. It's kind of like wandering, exploring, and side questing in something like a Bethesda game, only with no enemies. And denser scenery. And "painting". Dunno if I'll get really into it, but it's pleasant and now and again it's nice when a game isn't all about violently smooshing stuff. Although after a while, I miss violently smooshing stuff. I've been well-trained apparently.

More powah, of course. Or if you ever get one of those fancy 144 monitors and want the high fps to go with it. O just want overhead so you don't have to worry about games that drop by 20 in combat, or whatever. ...not that you'd really need a 20xx for that.

I'm not sure I'd get to 17. I have hand/finger and knee arthritis, that's my excuse! I can still sit in a lotus position or all manner of odd leg sitting contortions in a chair pretty comfortably for hours - it's the getting up again part that is trouble.

So are you saying if one buys a game through Epic, installs it, then completely uninstalls Epic's client, the game will still run/play?

Not sure exactly as all I have is Win 10 but I'd guess it's not built into the OS. Not sure if they can't just use the web store https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/windows Windows Store games/apps, last I knew, are not built like normal/regular desktop apps most of us are used to. They use an API currently called Universal Windows Platform (UWP). At the moment such needs Win10 to even run. When it all began, it was Win8 required. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Windows_Platform I have not researched it recently (i'm guessing they've at least made improvements...) but when I asked people on forums if Win7 could run FFXV's mobile animated version when it "came to PC" via Windows Store, everyone said "no." I took it at face value and didn't try.

I haven't used them yet because I had Win7. And I still won't use them because ... I don't want to give them any more support than I already do via their O/S. It's not rational perhaps but yeah. I can sort of understand a perspective that extreme measures might be needed in order to get consumers to move away from what are current clients. People are often resistant to change of course. But I'd prefer/like if they could offer something more concrete to the consumer - like, different services/abilities Steam does not, or something along those lines - then "buying" exclusivity. Even something like a longer refund policy, like extending it to 3 or 4 hours played instead of just 2. Or how about being able to play Offline mode without having to login to Online to tell it to go Offline, first. Or a "revert to last version" patch ability in case the most recent patch makes you unable to play for some reason. Stuff like that.

I still haven't finished watching the 2nd season.

Yeah, I totally get that. I just reach a point where my thought process ends up like "I'm already spending an extravagant amount what's another few hundred on something that hopefully will last many years". I'll skip the next gpu generation just like I skipped 10xx. Might even skip two generations, the way my gaming habits have become.

Today I searched for "do si do" on Youtube. I was looking for dance videos. I did indeed get quite a lot of dance related videos, but I also got a lot of results about marijuana, judging by the picture frames. Looks like there's a growing strain called dosido, or something. I did not click on any of those videos since I'm not interested, but it did make me reflect how much word, phrase, etc associations have changed over the years - at least as far as search engine results are concerned. Whenever I socialize now (which isn't too often I admit) I'm half-afraid to say a lot of phrases I'm used to saying from when I was younger, wondering if they mean something different now. If I said I really loved to do si do! would they think I was a pothead? It's like a minefield!

I skipped the first episode to be honest. I always go to the Episodes list and read the descriptions, if such is provided. The description didn't sound appealing to my tastes so I didn't start there.

Took a long shower, thought about it. Going to stick to my original thought of not buying under those options/waiting. I remember that the whole reason I finally registered/installed Steam was because of Fallout:New Vegas. I wanted to play that so badly. So I caved. And it was a great game. For almost a year it was the only game I had on Steam. But this time I can't follow you, Obsidian. I'm sorry. I'll buy it when it's somewhere else besides Epic and MS-store.