LadyCrimson

Finished "B:The Beginning." I feel like character story/background/motivation in the series remains a bit confuddled (or at times, overly simplistic, like the "bad guys" aren't typically well developed) but still, it's entertaining in the back half. I'd give it a B.

While I haven't been keeping up with it much lately, baseball is never "just a game." It's still one of the few sports where if I actually sit down to watch a game, I most likely will keep it on/watch it until the end - I mean I may be web surfing at the same time, but you know what I mean.

Pizza is life. That is all.

No, it's not a death star.

Snow is nice to visit, but I definitely don't want to live in it. Hubby ran off with my car again and won't be home until late. Guess I shall garden a bit (it stopped raining) then videogame. Either that or try to watch Netflix. There's actually a lot of S. Korean films there now that I'd like to catch up on. Just difficult when you've unintentionally trained yourself to fall asleep to the TV...

Watched 5 episodes of "B: The Beginning" on Netflix. Anime series. First couple episodes I was kind of confused about what was going on, who these slightly bizarro-joker chrs. were that kept fighting each other, and the cop-chick chr. was kind of annoying. But by the fifth episode I'm becoming more hooked. The mystery deepens but starts to make more sense, the cop-chick and the genius-grumpy-cop with a past start to have some good/funny scenes. I wouldn't say it's awesome but it's enough to keep you watching.

Thanks, modder's. Now I can use Ansel whenever I bloody want (in diners, certain combat animations, cutscenes) instead of seeing that stupid "Ansel cannot be activated right now" message. Because a screenshot of Ignis drinking coffee is mandatory, man, mandatory.

Is that all? That's a bargain, man, a bargain. ...but yeah, I know what you mean. We rented a house for around 15 years. Only reason we could buy what we bought was because we'd saved up some + the start of recession hit and lowered the prices and increased our options a bit. And even then it was tight. Bay Area/any similar type of area is nuts.

I need another game that supports nvidia's Ansel. But none of these seem interesting. I guess it's too new. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/geforce-experience/games/#ansel One of my favorite things about photography was always composing a shot, taking that long time to actually figure out what you want in the frame, scooting closer or farther, squatting or leaning over, zoom or not zoom, getting a neckache from holding a position for too long trying to frame/angle for a shot....which is why I suppose I like Ansel/taking screenshots so much. Sounds silly maybe but ah well. Reached the main open world area of FFXV on PC, which took its toll on the 4k performance meter, mostly in frame pacing/smoothness. Had to turn Lighting to Low instead of Average (Lighting in XV seems to be largely about reflections, like on water and rain soaked objects). Although I think it did reduce some of the slight bloom-y look as well ... which bothers me not at all. Feels stable again but if I have to I can always drop it to 1440, still looks pretty good on the 4k screen that way and w/Ansel you can make shots any size you want regardless, anyway.

Cat logic:

*surfs through Netflix and Amazon Prime's recent releases lists* *adds a bunch of maybes to watchlists* *decides, in the end, that there's nothing to watch and flounces back to the garage to pester the hubster* ....I currently feel like this:

Gladio thinks he's such hot ****. I'd like to tell him he's not, but he might swat me. No Palicos, but maybe this counts? I don't think they like being petted, tho. Sometimes I tell ignis to drive this really really long route and leave the game on like a screen saver while I do other tasks.

I had that. Lost 10kg. I would have none of that and started eating like a madman. Only gained 5kg. Reverted back to not eating much. I'm eating 3 small portions per day. On the plus side, while I did already lose a fair bit of weight over a year ago, I haven't been this weight since I was 25. Sadly not being hungry doesn't also include motivation to do huge amounts of toning/muscle exercise, so I still won't be wearing a bikini like I did back then. Dealing with mother's will stuff. I mean, not officially, I'm not the main Trustee, but still legal stuff to deal with. Which I'm sort of avoiding/procrastinating. Don't care about wills. But guess I have to still "do something" regardless. Maybe I can sign something to the effect of "I don't want anything, just leave me alone." Enjoying the rain this weekend. Went to the store this afternoon and found myself skipping through the puddles. It was a good mood-lift.

Ever go through one of those phases where eating is just too much bother and you're never hungry to boot? That's me the past few weeks. I eat a piece of toast or small bowl of soup now and then. Got on the scale this morning and I guess I've lost 6 pounds. Pffft. Still not hungry.

I was always neutral/"he's ok" but using Ansel I've gained a new appreciation for Ardyn as a villain. Not sure why. Stopping every few seconds and floating the camera, you tend to notice all the subtle expressions and movements artists worked on that you never notice in real-time and it adds something. He's become my 2nd favorite screen subject.

4k @ 150% scaling is to die for. Too bad I only get 18-20fps that way. But ... it's playable enough to run around and use Ansel. Which apparently is the only important thing to me, anymore. I mean, native 4k is great just to play in. But the screens ... they come out even better with more scaling and ... MUST BE EVER MORE HI-RES SCREENS, MORE. I think my computer is crying.

Tried taking a large "SuperResolution" screenshot. Taking it was no problem. Editing it was - PaintShopPro kept saying "out of memory" and I could only select/copy/paste a tiny piece the size of one of their heads. I think I won't try the max 61k x 34k and 28GB size. Ansel's inability to cope with FFXV's water 9 times out of 10 does not amuse me. This, however, does amuse me. A lot.

Managed to get FFXV stable at 4k but only at 30fps. So I can't take videos while playing that way. Screenshots/Ansel are still fair game. It looks really good on the 4k TV/native 4k w/high textures/LoD. 1080 with 150% scaling produces crisp screens and videos with less aliasing issues but doesn't look as good on the 4k TV. I'm glad I bought more system RAM tho - it's gone up as high as 11GB while playing for a while. I've had very few performance issues but there are more tiny bugs/glitches than before - with some of them also present on the console version. For me only minor irritants, nothing major. Still, annoying they're in both versions.

Ever wonder what those smoke trails that surround your character at times look like from the "outside?" Bullet shaped cone, apparently.

There's been quite a few posts in fora going "Bug! Can't level up!", people reply "Take off the Nix Band" and then "Oh..." I was rather dubious about having all those things (most of which were paid dlc in some form or another) just dumped into the game from the getgo like that for new players, and it's been rather amusing to watch the ruckus. "Why/What are these cheat items in my inventory?! Can I remove them?" "I put on the Ragnarok and lulz this game is so easy" and "AP too easy to get? (while wearing AP boosting bonus accessories)" and "Fishing is too easy (while using the dlc fishing gear)" and ... The choice of having them there is fine, but many don't seem to understand or even read item descriptions, it's like they just put them on because they are there. lulz.

omg, this thread, you guys. If a game gives me a choice I usually end up making my characters female, sorta Asian and loosely (very loosely) like me. Identity or laziness (I don't have to imagine a new face), I'm not sure which, maybe both. But it doesn't bother me to have no choice either. Sometimes I even prefer such these days because I don't have to think about fiddling with 5 pages of slider bars in an editor. Just depends.

Full release of FFXV - performs about the same as the demo. Looks great. I still take too many screenshots and videos to make any plot progress. PS4 controller works fine with it via DS4Windows+ScpToolkit. On the Pro, tried to start the new Chapt. 14 content. It seems like it'd be fun (there's several new quests+the boss fights) but somehow not feeling it. Maybe because there's no Ansel feature. I wonder if six months from now I will have stopped playing it on console ...

I has crowbar. I refuse to wear the HEV suit.

HAHA 30 minutes left and Steam servers go offline/no connection. HAHA. Edit: Phew. Back up and it resumed properly. I forgot it was Tues. Steam maintenance I suppose.

Oh and ... The game is becoming more and more like a RPG with MMO elements as time goes on. It's still single-player but you can feel the "games as service" footprint more heavily now then when I first started playing. At this point I don't care since I mostly play it to goof off and see it more as an action-rpg anyway, so it's fine but it did annoy me greatly initially, back when.