LadyCrimson

I guess my current "hobby" is to check Steam-workshop once a day and try one of the silly/stupid mods. I get my daily laugh and then go back to doing other, non-computer things.

Today it's slow cooked beef tri-tip roasts (wrapped in bacon) and around halfway through some small red potatoes tossed around the edges to cook with it. The house is going to smell so yummy all day...

I was thinking today about how my old 35mm film camera, it had a tiny little watch-like battery in it, that I replaced maybe once every year. Sometimes longer. Vs. having to recharge batteries constantly/carry more than one battery, like now. Which made me hunt for the thing (stuffed in a box somewhere). It was a Pentax ME-Super, with a couple zoom lenses (I never had the stock 50mm). It was a very nice basic film camera for those days. Tough too, and mine's in great condition (no scuffing or cracks etc). I picked it up and it's so small/light vs. the DSLR's, even with the zoom lens attached. Outside of having no instant-access to pics, I still love the concept of non-digital. So I looked up if you could still (easily) buy film. Apparently you can although not as cheaply as before. If I only had the space or an extra bathroom for a development room, I could get back into it as a hobby probably. Hubby wants to build a shed, a small greenhouse etc. in the backyard. Can I build a darkroom shed? The grass area is fairly large and rectangular, we don't need any grass, right?

My online presence is shrouded in dark mystery and confounding contradictions to confuse and misdirect all search and ad bots and such. I am invisible! .... "but honey, there are gov. forms and the like that" ... hush, you, I'm invisible, let's go with that. Today I'm inelegantly sprawled out on the daybed in my PC room, watching Netflix/surfing the net, because past couple days it's too bloody warm outside/in the rest of the house. Maybe summer has finally arrived vs. only peeking around the corner now and then? When the early evening picks up tho, I'll go back outside and do a little yard trimming. Summer days may suck in a way (to me), bu summer evenings are the best.

Right now I'm playing the Steam is doing its service downtime and thus I can't play FFXV since that last game update appears to have replaced Offline play ability with an endless loading screen (SE programming ineptness, I assume). With a side of "#1 reason why I hate always-online singleplayer gaming/services no matter how convenient it may appear."

My life is now complete AND I don't have to buy the Pocket Edition! Hardehar. Man I don't know how all the modders manage the zillion bones when they convert stuff to work with XV. I've looked at some models - sooo many bones. Still so many issues plaguing them (rigging gets wonky/gap-filled with movement or certain angles, cloth physics, lighting issues at night, other things). I've downloaded a lot of object models of the bro's and other npc's for future but I'm far from being able to work with them myself yet. :/

Not made by me. Just saying. I still can't get anything past the mod tool's compiler. I'm not at all into replacement model mods, but this one was funny to take screens of for a few minutes. (it's the Noct. model from FFXV Pocket Edition)

I'm not unwilling to try something ... if it's cheap enough, and I'm bored enough. But I'm not going to spend $30-$60 to try a game style/genre that I know I generally don't get into. Maybe $10-$15. Maybe. :D

*skims through thread* ...Fallout online - there was a time when an online game that allowed for soloing might have appealed. Probably wouldn't now. Plus I'm not quite sure what they mean by "you can solo it" - is it that you can not team-up, but you'll still see people and they may try to kill you? eg, it'd be avoid-the-player-killers gameplay. Or if you solo are you alone in the world. That might not be very interesting (alone) if it's set up/made for most chrs. in the game to be people. At any rate, doesn't sound like my bag.

Randomly came across a reality-tv series on Netflix called The Joy of Techs. Two guy friends, one high-tech oriented the other not, where the former keeps trying to convince the latter of how awesome crazy tech gadgets are for living/doing stuff. It's obviously largely scripted and played for comedy, but some of the episodes were hilarious, like the Camping or Household ones. Has a couple clunker episodes (one where they keep trying to destroy tech gadgets advertised as being super-hard to damage) but at around 25-30 min. each and only 10 episodes it was a nice light way to spend a lazy evening.

Whenever hubby wears his cheap old-man straw wide-brim fedora-like hat and cheap plaid long-sleeved shirt when he gardens, at some point in the day enter the garage and he'll be standing at the open outside-garage door frame, just standing in hunched-shoulder lanky silhouette, squinting in the sun with a scowl on his face as he smokes a cancer-stick. And I'm reminded of all those horror movies where the kiddies drive by on a lonely road and look out the window where somewhere in a vast wheat field a creepy old farmer in a hat is staring back at them. ...and I go back inside the house.

I'm kind of the same, although I can definitely understand some of the appeal (I've seen a couple crazy 3D Imax films wearing some serious headgear, altho that was years ago). I don't think I'd enjoy it all that much overall. It'd be way too much sensory overload for me, I don't think I could take it for more than 15 minutes at a time or something. Virtual programmable worlds we could physically march through and interact with, like a sci-fi holodeck, I'd love something like that. But all we have is this wear-goggles/helmet "VR" stuff right now and it's just not my wheelhouse.

Well...that's a complete surprise to me. Not that I ever researched the guy and his life or something. (edit - had no idea about the background issues, I mean) Hubby and I have watched some episodes of some of his shows - they were always hit and miss. Some episodes were very interesting, others were meh to downright snooze-inducing. Most of the time I didn't get any weird vibes while watching, although he probably wasn't a personality I'd get along with if tossed into a locked room for long. But he was such a staple - we joked all the time about how many variations of the format series he had/kept having. RIP.

-Management/rts strategy games - just not ones with 100 menus and statistics graphs, if you get what I mean. I like management games with a certain kind of real time flow, not number or political crunchers. -Party-based rpg's -Action-rpg's/dungeon crawlers - although I'm rather burnt on them at the moment, but I still enjoy the loot-action concepts. -survival with building/exploration. More the survival aspect than any zombie/monster aspect, which is always meh. -I liked adventure/platforming-action like the original Tombraiders, but they don't make them like that anymore. Things I never or almost never play: competitive MP, cinematic shooters (simple things like the old days of original Doom are fun in short doses tho), side-scrollers of any type, any game that seems largely made up of cutscenes, QTE's, and walking from place to place (or 5 minutes of action) just to see more cutscenes and QTE's.

Tossed 5pound pork shoulder roast in the slow cooker, then sat and watched some tutorials on Blender on one monitor, trying to follow along with the program opened on the other monitor (make a donut! make an anvil!). The guy doing these videos is good and you learn what buttons to press to do some stuff and it's easy to follow along and see it happen in your own window, but I don't understand why it works or why it's doing what it's doing so it never really sinks in. Which is exactly how I felt about schooling. Especially math. There's that level of acceptance of "it just does/works that way/accept it/do it" which makes me go "yeah but..." But it's interesting. I might figure out how to do the things I want to do, eventually. Unless I get bored first.

So that FFXV reskin tool. Even those with fair knowledge/skill of direct modding and 3D software use (not me) are frustrated and oft stymied by the thing. --it's simple on its own but... --it doesn't let you extract/access any models/files directly. Still need to use all those 3rd party tools. This is just how you can upload to Workshop with a nice in-game mod manager screen etc. --when you go to build/compile a mod after adding your .fbx file to the base mod structure they've set up (model, weapon, armor, who's going to wear/use it), more often than not it fails. It only really likes the sample files they gave us, which were few. Oh and apparently the expensive monthly sub program Maya? Of course. --for some reason the build/compile process is done not on your computer but some server "out there" - so there's an upload and redownload stage and anyone with a terrible 'net connection is going to be out of luck if their project is of any size. Plus even just that alone can fail from a random server disconnect. A very few people have made some decent looking swords this first day. Others have made joke mods because they're frustrated or amused. Maybe they plan to update/improve it over time. Jeez. It's pretty bad. I hope their Level Editor shows a little more ... usability.

Spent all day trying to learn a few tricks so maybe I could at least make minimal use of this utter failure of a "reskin mod tool" SE gave us, failed spectacularly, but at least I was often amused in the process.

XV's latest patch update is out on console (before PC). Included is another outfit to change Ignis' DLC hair that so many preferred. Only, this one he's wearing his glasses, so ppl on console who wanted the hair without the glasses are still outta luck. But never mind that. It's the first time I've turned XV on, with the console, in over 2 months. My eyes. Seriously, my eyes. I'm not (just) talking about the horrible dithering of the hair, either. Yes yes from 7-8 feet away it looks pretty good, really. You get used to it, it's lots better in motion, it's fine, etc. But my god, no wonder my eyes hurt/felt so dry/burnt out so much for a year. I thought it was just my age. All the background blur/low view distance that maybe you don't consciously register but your eyes would see as being out of focus and struggle to cope with mixed messages. It's horrible.

Watched "Annihilation." Its slow, trippy (and sort of depressing) pace keeps you watching because "wtf is happening." For a little while, it turns into a horror movie. Then near the ending it goes back to sci-fi and "wtf is happening." One of those ambiguous leaves you wondering endings. I can't say it's a good movie, exactly, but it is one of those movies that has you thinking about it for a while afterwards.

Now trying to make myself run through all the post-game Menace dungeons just to get the one-off items they contain. There are only 3 that I liked originally but at this point if I never do any of them again I won't mind. They are all so monotonous after more than 2-3 times. Especially the one with 100 rooms/levels. >.> ...then I have to do the entire thing over in NG+ so I can have 2 each of those one-offs and a "completionist" file on PC like I have on console already. After THAT, I can go back to just replaying the first half of the game now and then and ignoring the rest, or just goof off with mods etc. ...2 days for the reskin mod tool. I'm looking forward to that more than trying to go through these Menace dungeons. Why can't I be less of a compulsive "completionist" type.

I think I've changed more than the internet.

Hm. Well it depends a bit on what you define as an RPG. Maybe: Fallout:NV, KOTOR2, with Might and Magic 7 and Baldurs Gate 1 vying for 3rd spot. I'm not sure. I think BG1 is more of a RPG but M&M7 for me has a slight edge in terms of being more fun gameplay. (I tend to focus more on gameplay, then if it's the type, memorable characters over anything else) ...and of course (to those that know of me) I obviously love Final Fantasy XV as much as any of the three above, but I don't really see it as an RPG per se because there's such a lack of choice/control outside of combat. FFXV is more a party-based action/adventure. I also wouldn't count Diablo/like fare, even tho a few of such were some of my most-hours played. That said I think overall the number of RPG's I've actually played (let alone completed) is fairly small vs. many on these forums.

The only BG1 forum I remember was the oldstyle one with no avatars and that threaded BB like format. I think I recall when they shut that one down but I never went to the new ones, or didn't stay for long, or something. Ah, the early days of game forum-ing. I used to spend a lot of time at a Ceasar3 forum and a DK1 forum and ... 'net seemed a lot calmer and more rational back then overall. Probably wasn't tho and it's just my nostalgia.

oby's no longer around? I didn't even notice. Shows how much I pay attention these days. I think it's been something like 12 years off and on for me. I can't believe that much time has gone by. Well, I can (looks in the mirror) but you know what I mean. I do remember the old old boards which I was a part of for a while as well, but the memory is so faded and I don't recall anyone I met there being here. Mostly because I don't recall names probably. I don't even remember what handle/name I used on those old places.

LOL ... Levi's pretty...when you can actually get a whole shot of her. It's pretty difficult. And she doesn't show up as a Summon very often.