LadyCrimson

7 Days to Die - version 1.0 is probably the version I've done the most .xml editing/learning ever. I'm not sure this is a good thing or not - since it means I'm more dissatisfied with vanilla than ever - but I guess at least .... I can. Plus it's been rather interesting of itself, testing/figuring stuff out. Single player games should always be gameplay moddable. Not necessarily giant mod-kits/overhauling is easy like frying an egg kind of moddable, but some easy-ish, no special tools required tweaking allowances. Like, if you're not going to give players three pages of gameplay options to checkbox, let them do it with file tweaking. I don't know why every game in this era doesn't allow it. 😛 Edit: "Easy/Normal/Hard" does not cut it anymore.

The more I see of Avowed, the less interested I become. Of the shown gameplay: ---if they don't allow massive shrinking UI scaling or turning elements on/off, dear lord, whyyyyyyyyy. UI's where I feel like I'm peering through a fence are not UI's I am going to play. ---that blue companion guy talks way too much. ---why do npc's always tell the chr. to pull a lever etc when either they could do it themselves or maybe that minion that's standing RIGHT NEXT TO THE LEVER could do it? ---the graphics are fine

Splitting off a political thing now and then - 2024 US Election - if/as it becomes a prominent subject for weeks/months ... nothing wrong with that imo.

Full stealth/Assassin's outfit with 100%, check. Infra-vision googles, check. High level Stealth perk bonuses while crouched, check. Can't see me! Verrrry close even when facing you. If they're facing away from you, can kill them without them ever reacting. The other in the room doesn't even react when you kill the first one. I wonder if that outfit bonus will get nerfed back down to 99%. Even if not a Tier6 level, it's still fairly OP'd. But it's going to take most a long while to get there+high stealth Perk, plus it's slower clearing, plus it's not as invulnerable outside/en-masse, so. Seems fair to me. Makes stealth build my favorite thing tho.

Borderlands 4 teaser trailer. Teaser is not gameplay and tells/shows nothing of value except "2025". Eh, maybe. I will at least pray for it to be somewhere between BL2 and BL3 - eg, not worse than BL3. So I can stand being "forced" to play it when hubby wants to buy it. 😛 If it looks worse than BL3 - hubby may have to play alone. ======================== Also: Manor Lords update news: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1363080/discussions/0/4434443557916093138/

Figured out how to make myself a sort of pan-chocolate cake/brownie - so it's semi low carb (120 net carbs or so for a 9x9 pan). Greek yogurt/cottage cheese, egg, a little actual flour, a little almond flour, a little sugar, butter, dark cocoa powder. It comes out sort of extra spongy but it tastes decent (I don't need super-sweet), and I have probably made it too often the past week (from trying to figure out a variation I liked). >.> I tried that "cottage cheese/egg flatbread" notion too - I didn't like that as much. I mean, it's fine, and cut into squares would work to put your sausage/cheese between, but it tastes like ... well, quiche, or something. There is zero about it that makes me think "bread." Since I'm not zero-carb, I'd rather just eat a slice of bread a few times a week.

Me: "Oh, I remember this song from when I was a little kid." *off-key loud* "SHE WAS BLINDED BY THE LIGHT! WRAPPED UP LIKE A ... dushin? ... ANOTHER ROAMER IN THE NIGHT, BLINDED BY THE LIGHT!" "SHE WAS BLINDED BY THE LIGHT! WRAPPED UP LIKE A ... *du-mumble* ... ANOTHER ROAMER IN THE NIGHT...." Me: "What the heck is he saying anyway? Probably 45 years hollering the 1st phrase but mumbling that one word. The internet exists now..." Me: .... "Oh."

Supacell, Netflix Most of the 1st episode is chr. backstory/building, which I didn't find all that compelling (per usual) and I was about ready to give it up. But the final minutes made me go "ok, I'll give it 2nd episode shot." Watched the whole thing (6 episodes) in one day. Barely FFW'ed. It does not do anything unexpected (well, maybe one thing but not really), it is not innovative for its genre, the heroes all have typical power sets, and it occasionally has chrs acting/doing stupid things (magic powers logic+one main chr. relation was annoying). Yet for some reason I liked it. It reminds me a tad of a cross between that good 1st season of Heroes and Xmen perhaps. I suspect I simply ended up liking the main actors (all unknown to me, which probably helped - a couple looked slightly familiar) and the South UK/urban culture setting. Or perhaps I was just in the right mood. 😛 2nd season is greenlit - which is good, I'm willing to check it out.

The only mods FO:NV ever needed were the all-companions and the dance mod. So says I. 😛

*fiddle with 7 days .xml edits re: all kinds of things, make maps, play a map, say those edit changes turned out neat but bored of map/chr already, repeat process over and over* *explore planet's in No Man's Sky, build a few bases, explore more planets until I'm sick of looking at planets* <---this game needs more modding capability I could use a couple more chill games of this nature to stick in a rotation. I have yet to find any that peak my interest. By the time Light No Fire comes out I'll end up playing it, even if it's more of an online game than NMS, just because I'll want something similar. I'll just have to hope it's truly large enough that I can find isolated spots that no one has found yet, or no one wants to find. >.>

^ Oh, yeah, I get that if half the folks are going to "cheat"/skirt around the amateur rules, like big companies skirting/loopholeing their way out of taxes or regulations or whatever, and nothing can be done to (long term/forever) stop it, it's kind of pointless/gets really circular to fuss over it, especially for something like entertainment. And I also wasn't against loosening some restrictions re: having been paid for a few things, like at least ad sponsership if nothing else (wasn't that disallowed at one point?). Training is expensive. But for me it was more interesting to watch, relatively speaking, lesser knowns compete against each other then maybe "the last three winners of the Tour de France duke it out in the Olympics." I guess Olympics to me wasn't really about current best in the world, it was more sort of about discovering the potentials for the new crop of best in the worlds. Edit: maybe that's an odd way to look at them, but that's more why I watched, when I'm not much of a watch-sports person.

I haven't seen it yet but I can already tell I will think the best thing about DeadPool/Wolverine will be the meme's of the dance. imo, every superhero should do that dance at least once.

Microplastics in water/food. Pesticides. Hormones. Too many sugars. Too much fillers etc etc. And now ... Consumer Reports says rocket fuel. Or more specifically, perchlorate. Fruits/veggies 2nd highest after baby/kid foods. To eliminate all risk, one must not eat, drink or breathe. eg, die. 😛 ....but I'm doing fine, hey no one lives forever - and life is still grand/worth it. Hubby's still in a funky grump but such is life - we're going good overall. Hope it's going well for everyone else, too.

I did not watch any of the Olympics, but YouTube kept throwing videos re: that breakdancer RayGun into my face. I didn't even know breakdancing was in the Olympics. Do they still do "dream teams" vs. amateurs? I stopped watching when it was no longer even technically amateurs.

At last, I might be able to carry enough "stuff." **just kidding. I do modify backpack size (the money/gold line is where I normally have it, default is 3 rows less) but outside of "godmode" you could not fill that many slots and still be able to move, even w/maxed bonuses, heh. 1.0 made the general center X center cursor huge tho, and I've been trying to figure out how to make it smaller. It's the one that shows up even if your "hands" are empty, just a giant grey X. I can make text used in UI's smaller, make the UI generally smaller, alter pieces of the UI (like health bars, toolbars) change columns and rows to silly levels, make that center inventory/chr/crafting/storage window-area the size of a dot if I felt like it (you have to make the center bit smaller to have such a tall rows inventory) and there's ways to remove the ranged weapon aim-down-sights crosshairs etc, but I can't figure out how to make that stupid X change. There's also this giant white circle icon that shows up when repairing/upgrading blocks. Maybe they're an actual image. Still, must be a way to scale it somehow....

We did the more pricey "still in theaters" rental of Kevin Coster's "Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1". 3 hours long. He's the director. ---first hour has all this bad stuff happening to a group of people you know nothing about and care little about. It was filmed ok, actors were ok. ---Kevin Coster's chr. finally shows up at some point after all that, and I thought "ok, here's the main story, it's starting now." But no, after his bits the movie continued to introduce more characters (or go back to ones you'd seen very briefly, earlier). ---I was actually finding it all fairly watchable - not great, but watchable - but after two hours of "is there a point to all of these threads and groups" I had enough. Hubby watched the rest, I did not. Like many big Costner films, there's an element of "spot the well known chr./guest actor" throughout. Apparently there will be a Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 and maybe a Chapter 4 (if the others do well). So the notion that the film would not have a proper ending is also what made my attention founder. Maybe when all chapters are out I'll watch the rest. It felt like it should've been another mini-series, ala Hatfields and McCoy's, vs. 4 (possibly all 3 hr) movies. Costner's trying to have a magnum opus I guess.

At this point Donkey from Shrek would be preferable over Trump.

Randomly ran across a YouTube channel that seemingly has every single episode (over 550 of them anyway) of Richard Dawson hosted Family Feud. Making my way through the early first ones, the 70's time capsule it (and other game shows I'd guess) presents is making me giggle. The hair, the suits/dresses, the silly questions and answers. When you watch it now, one has to remember the answers would not include a bunch of things you might think of that came after the 70's. Also, that final big prize of $5k would be about $15-$16k today, or something. Anyway - just more blasts from the past, for me. Jeopardy was #1, but Feud was stupid fun in small doses too.

Every English lyric site only says floating/drifting/weightless, no mention of cold/pulled thru space etc. Hm. So, an inaccurate English translation = the destruction of even the remote survival dreams for poor ol' Major Tom? Maybe he just forgot to put on a sweater! Ah well...that was my original belief anyway. So unless he became a Star Child - RIP!

I knew of the Bowie connection (and the later Bowie addiction allegories or some such). But I have the same issue w/Bowie's song - it's not actually explicitly stated what goes wrong, like a rocket exploded or another astronaut witness, it's simply implied/assumed because no one can contact him. In Schilling's version there's even the line about how no one knows he's still alive - which I took to be a "he's still alive floating somewhere, but not for long". Maybe Major Tom is a Star Child.

My new NMS pet - TulipHead. It was simply spawning all over on one of my home bases now. I haven't explored much/seen any of the other new exotic fauna. On the 55" OLED TV, this is way too white-bright/blown out. The visual upgrades are mostly nice/good, but bright white noon sun/clear skies/water on some planets were ugh. Turning TV settings down a bit more (I already have such pretty low, since dark room) helped tho.

No Man's Sky --Since I don't build giant bases, and I also build most of them hanging in mid-air, so far none of my chrs/larger bases were an issue. And I lucked out where most of my main "planets" didn't change too much, either. A little here and there, like foliage shapes or fauna, nothing big. --the new water is nice, although it's mostly a big difference on oceans/coasts. Overall cleaner graphic looks. Maybe sometimes almost too "clean." And some lighting is ... overblown re:whites/contrast. I do not have any HDR settings on. Still had to turn such settings down on the TV to not be blinded occasionally. 😛 --performance is about the same at native4k, did turn more things to High vs. Ultra to be 60fps/safe, don't notice a visual difference. But I think I'll go back to 7 Days for now. NMS supposedly will have a "Worlds version 2" update coming later - maybe that'd be a better time to jump back in.

I guess I'm on a "are they still alive/how they doing" kick. Happily the answer here is yes (he's 68 now). I think I might actually like this live, slightly (I think, could be wrong) lower pitched version more than the original English/MTV version. Or maybe I just like a live version better. But what I've always wanted to know - is Major Tom dead? Does coming home = crashing/burning up in the atmosphere? That's what I always thought but ... shrug.

--On the one hand: haven't played it in a long while, this is a massive world/everything generation update! Exploration might be fun/feel new again for a while! (new ships/space station designs in earlier updates I didn't care one whit about) --On the other hand: probably a 20% chance any old saves and their main bases are broken (misshaped, half deleted, underground, whatever) by planet generation changes under your feet. Your fave planet could be entirely different/a different biome all of a sudden, stuff like that. If hit by that, one has to deal with, or just write those saves off (which would include your ships, freighters, collections) and start anew. ---either performance fix patches will be incoming, or might need a 4080 to run it at 4k. Might give an idea how Light No Fire might run tho. 😛 ---And do I try to preserve my install of older version of game to play it totally Offline if I can't stand/run this new version? More work. Sigh. I'll think about it for the weekend. But it looks nice!

Out of curiosity, do you get much satisfaction from that thing others call "achievement?" I mean, sometimes it does feel nice to finally get a thing off your to-do list crossed off, don't get me wrong, but I mean in a larger sense. A lot of my youth was spent chasing the notion because "everyone" told me that's what you're supposed to do/feel. My inner turmoil quieted quite a bit once I realized I didn't need "goals/achievements" to be content. I'm not geared that way is all. I would like to not feel stuck in emotional neutral all the time tho. I would also like to create more memories. After many years, one starts to realize sitting around the house doesn't make many memorable memories. And yeah, people tire me out too. But I don't mind if they're simply around - like at a park - I just don't want to interact beyond a nod as one walks by. Social interaction isn't the kind of memory I'm looking for. 😄