LadyCrimson

Is it May/June yet? I really want those FFXV official mod tools now. I'd just be happy with being able to create/reskin the clothes at this point, darnit. I don't care about repurposing questlines/Hunts or adding new monsters, vehicles, or complex new content mods - I need clothes! How can a rpg full of obvious fashion-horse dudes have hardly any CLOTHES. And chocobo colors! I need more chocobo colors! *** ***1st world gamer complaints

Started watching another Netflix anime called Sword Gai while eating a late dinner. Next thing I knew I was on Episode 5, before turning it off to to other things. I saw swords and magic and demons which is always a combo I like in anime (note: this is not of the dungeons and dragons types of swords and magic). Then came the action, the of course uber-handsome good team and bad team (why do I ALWAYS like anime chrs. with glasses...), and the "who cares what the reasons are" plot framework for the action and combat clashes. Easily digestible action anime. Although I hear it ends on a cliffhanger and who knows about a 2nd season. Still...another one I'll finish.

I like games with a lot of organizational and collection "busy work" and memorable characters/party members + fun combat (note: fun doesn't always mean difficult). I like singleplayer/offline option. For "story" rpg's I vastly prefer a "full party" vs. a lone protagonist. I gravitate towards more combat-heavy titles plus at least partially or pseudo open-world party-rpg's (eg. exploration is a biggie for me), as well as city-builder/RTS element types and survival-build-sandbox. I used to like Diablo/clones but I think I'm pretty tired of that subgenre, can't seem to get into them for long anymore. Dungeon Keeper 1, Caesar 3 and other old Impressions titles, Baldurs Gate 1, Might and Magic series, KOTOR2, Fallout:NV, Borderlands series, 7 Days to Die and recently FF-XV would be primary examples. Many newer titles have little to no appeal to me at all these days, for whatever reasons. If I find one I do like I play it for months/years and have no idea what's going on in gaming news outside of that, except for whatever news tidbits I read on forums like this one.

Good arch support can really help keep hips and back in alignment when standing. My ankles tend to "roll in" (flat feet, alas) which is bad for the ankles, hips and knees. Asic's is a brand I've always liked but depends on which shoe. Most of the time I just don't wear shoes, around the house, tho. I stand on my tiptoes instead.

Why do clowns look creepy even in pixelated art form? While I spend plenty of time getting shots of the "boys" I spend just as much time trying to get combat shots. This hunt is good for Sagefire. Still trying to get a good one of Mark and Recoil. Linkstrikes have been near impossible to get good screens of since they're unpredictable and very brief animations but darnit I'm going to get them...

Spent the day unpacking the voice files (and some other files) of FFXV. Sadly I don't have a tool that can batch convert them into playable .mp3's or something yet, only one at a time. Slow going, just trying to find certain ones, which is tough with a zillion directories and mysterious (to ppl who didn't make the directories) file names. I wonder tho, why do games always break up long conversations into tiny tiny pieces? I don't mean battle cries or other short things, but something that plays in-game as, say, several uninterrupted sentences said at once by one character is still broken up into like one short bit after another. I guess just in case they change their minds and want to break it up? Anyway...not smart enough to do a lot with unpacked files and no official tools but still always interesting.

Camp scenes with Ansel. Every time you trigger/exit Ansel they move just a bit inbetween etc. I seriously cannot get anywhere in the main story on PC because for every 10 minutes of playing I spend like 40 minutes using Ansel. 2.5 weeks and I'm still in Chapt. 4! I may have to disable it for a while. Can someone make an ulgy-mod for Ignis please? God save me, I can't stop. He's always reminded me a bit of my (youthful) husband (physically and personality wise, even down to the coffee obsession) so I've always like Iggy best of the 4 bro's, but Ansel makes it 100x worse. You can make fun of me now.

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.