LadyCrimson

--got it to start again --I'd say overall fps/general performance is about the same for me, at my settings etc. --Ansel does work during combat actions now --Biscuit quest indeed fixed, the lock appeared, could rescue. --but CTD'd in about 20 minutes after casting a spell at an enemy. It's just totally random for me in the sense there is no predicting/avoiding a cause/moment. I do not CTD while fast traveling. When the CTD happens the GPU usage in task manager seems to do a sudden moderate drop then a spike to 100/max a micro-second before the crash, vs. the more typical steady-line 85-90%.

...nope, CTD'd after 10-12 minutes of randomly flying around on the broom. ...last night I turned DLSS back on and managed about 30 minutes. I had it off again after patch. ...you can use Ansel while sitting on the broom now. ...I'll restart and see if that Biscuit lock bug is fixed. Edit: oops now it won't even start. Hit Play button and the button turns blue for about 3 seconds then goes back to green/Play state again.

I saw some others on LInux posting about some crash fix, maybe it's the same one you're using. I guess it's all an argument to get rid of Winblows. I'm certainly not eager to go to Win11, but then I wasn't eager to move to any new version of Windows.

Well, that is not a promising start. Edit: ok it supposedly installed. Going to verify integrity before starting. I removed the Engine.ini config tweaks temporarily. Let's see if it starts...

Hogwart's patch: https://steamcommunity.com/app/990080/discussions/0/3789254716315683638/ Many crash related notes in there: ...I suppose that's why they feel so random... ...it says it fixed Ansel use while spells are cast and on the broom. Does that mean we can use it at those times now? ...like all patches, some say it broke the game/it's even worse, maybe especially some RT settings (at least I don't use those) etc.. I'm almost afraid to try it, lol. I suppose it can't get much worse than it already has been for me, since it started all the CTD recently.

^ Don't have a specific tool but I've used everything from screwdrivers to hard kitchen spatulas. They break quite often even then. I miss when things were mostly done with screws and metal clips but pretty futuristic designs don't work well with that I guess. Unrelated: Well, with brief testing, it would appear putting the power-target of the gpu (undervolting?) at or below 68% stops the CTD's in Hogwarts, for me. Or at least, stops them from happening at either start up and within the first 30 minutes. >.> At that low of a target (vs. 80%) I do lose 5-8fps tho. Makes me think Hogwart coding is currently doing something that triggers micro high wattage spikes for me, and either the gpu or psu or power strips or who knows what doesn't like it. Of course, that's still just a theory. ...ordered a new/different giant power strip because it's the easiest thing to try first. I bought one when we moved because the one I was using at the other house didn't have a long enough cord for wall outlet vs. middle of the room distance. And no, I'm not just concerned re: Hogwart's, I was having those spontaneous PC reboots, too.

^ "Taking this off is so easy!" in the 3 or 4 videos I watched for the PS4, I'd guess it was so easy because they'd done it on theirs several or a dozen times or more already. >.> Plus manufacture randomness. But yeah, 7 times out of 10 (not just computer stuff either) the plastic snaps break and then you're hunting for the duct tape.

One of my attempts to make a "oh this looks cool" show up in a screenshot. Oh, so that's what they look like (since you're usually so far away from them) -godmode cheat used so I didn't have to attack - Ansel works when enemies attack, just not when your chr. is doing any attack/animation

In my case it's always possible a reformat/O/S reinstall might help, or maybe it's even something hardware that more demanding games are triggering. But Hogwart's has many CTD complaints so I'm not alone with that one. That stupid hydro gpu cooler did slightly leak onto the gpu a bit, ages ago. Seemed fine but never know. >.> I haven't had any actual spontaneous reboots since doing some cleanup, and only CTD in Hogwart's and one Alpha-state game. I'm not building a new PC yet and I'm too lazy to reinstall O/S any time soon. I think the only thing I haven't tried yet is replacing the large industrial power strip much of my stuff is plugged into. One never knows.

Last of Us Episode 8 - Better then last episode, imo. I wish it had been maybe 10 minutes longer to pad out a certain early aspect/tension a bit more. ---Troy Baker playing a small role. 'Nuff said. ---With the way they have been condensing some things I'm certain they can end the show with the one episode left. One has to remember that TV is not a game with the player taking a long time to "do stuff" - the essential story can be told fairly briefly. It might've been better at 10 episodes vs. 9, however. ---I still feel like Episodes 1-3 were the best ones, with the rest falling a notch or two below. Still good.

Oh yeah, by mid-game that's not really an issue. It's just if you spent a lot of your moonstone when you get the first main RoR rooms, it might feel more significant. Had 300-500, spent a few hundred, that kind of thing. 999 is the max you can hold anyway. It's more just that some likely wasted a ton of time deco'ing before getting vivariums etc. Annoying.

"I think it's been like 5+-years, I wonder if my PS4-Pro is really dusty inside." "YouTube videos say it's easy to get the top piece off, just pull up hard on these corners." *struggles like Superman fighting Kryptonite repeatedly, break a nail, deep dents in the bottom of fingers, sit on floor, at a table, cursing the whole time* "LIARS." ... eventually hear the snap sounds, keep pulling etc. Finally comes loose - and didn't break anything! ...the fan was a little dusty but hardly worth the effort. Blew it out a bit, put cover back on. I guess I keep a fairly dust-free room. ...I am not taking the bottom cover off.

Hogwart's ever since it made me do a small patch for some reason: CTD, CTD, CTD, CTD. Sometimes it takes me 5 tries before it allows me to get to/enter the main menu. Sometimes it plays for 30 minutes, then CTD when take a step forward or I sneeze at the screen. I've tried almost everything, including copying back a backup of the older version game folder, nvidia studio drivers, deleting shader caches (several ways/times), windowed vs. windowed fullscreen, different settings in case one is bugged etc. Despite all that, and despite me saying each time I'm going to quit, since I have no life, I stubbornly keep trying, inbetween episodes of The Mentalist, and finished the astronomy tables, combat feats, and I think all that's left is 4 more Infamous Foes and total quests. I'm guessing for the side-quest collection I'm going to have to do the broom quests. I'm 39.5 and basically if you want max level you have to do EVERYTHING in the game. I wonder if that bugged Rescue Biscuit quest is going to prevent me from getting 100% re: quests completed/max clvl.... It probably sounds like I'm continually griping now, but if I didn't like the game overall I wouldn't still be trying to "complete" it ... right? It's just the technical problem rage. Or maybe I'm just a masochist. Oh, I did turn on Stray again, last night, as a break. I needed cute kitty and the "meow button" to soothe my CTD-rage. It did not CTD once, so I got plenty of Meow. Meow.

It doesn't quite end there. It's a bit of a gripe of mine, as a building-sim fan, that every time the room expands, it removes all wall deco (you do get the moonstone back I think), or suddenly anything you put on the floor may be in a weird looking spot, so there is no point in personal decorating until the end of the game. The design of it all is very nice looking tho, they did a good job with that.

I think most fables/fairy tales that are currently ostensibly for children are kind of like some of the tales in the Bible or other religious texts*. They are attempts at teaching morality lessons or behavior lessons. Philosophy or rules or "religious" lessons couched in more crowd-pleasing or relatable entertainment fantasy trappings (vs. a "thou shall not covet..." lecture) . On the flip side, you also have some that are the reverse and not punishment related (be good/bear with it and great rewards will come...even if it's only in the afterlife). Or some that are a sort of mixture of both (Little Mermaid feels like that to me - it's dark, but it's still a reward in the end since she doesn't put her life first and gets a chance to earn a soul). Whether they were originally for adults or not, who knows. Cinema has just stayed within that course, even if they then soften or give them happy ever after endings instead. *no offense to any religion/texts intended

HBOMax has all the seasons of The Mentalist. I recall liking that show a fair bit when it was airing, altho like many series I probably only watched 1 or 2 seasons. It's your fairly typical "genius observer type with a past" helps a cop team solve crimes show, but the lead Simon Baker is just so great in it that it elevates it a bit. Rewatching it, it mostly holds up. Mostly it's fun seeing the early episodes again after all this time, maybe I'll try to finish thru season 5, when I think the main chr. arc ends (the show lasted a couple more years after that but probably went very downhill). Quite a few well known tv actors from the time period sprinkled throughout as well. I had forgotten how much I liked the deadpan demeanor of the supporting chr. played by Tim Kang, too. He had the perfect face/voice for such. I looked him up and I guess he has a recurring role in that Magnum PI reboot. Almost makes me want to check that out now, or at least an episode or two.

When you finally finish all 95 Merlin Trials, see the steam achievement listed in Steam's client window. Then 10 minutes later you exit game and the PC reboots itself in the process. When you reboot/restart Steam, the Achievement is gone/not registered anymore, but you've still completed all 95 in game, so ... FUBAR. Although, maybe I could load an autosave if there's one before I did the last one. (EDIT - yeah, that worked, Merlin's Beard registered again. then the game crashed on me again. ) Oh well. At least it shows up in the game itself. Pfft. There's maybe 4 or 5 unfinished in-game collection stuff left, like astronomy tables, 10 more side quests, etc. But game is crashing more often again. I think I'm going to call it quits until they put out 5 more patches or something.

Hogwart's - if you think most of the outdoors nights or night in general are a little too bright, you can play around with another Engine.ini line tweak: [/script/engine.renderersettings] r.TonemapperGamma=1.60 ...where the 1.60 is anything you want. For me and the OLED + no fog I had to keep it pretty high (160-165) or crushed all black details (like faces/walls) etc. Others with fog on/non-OLED were saying something like 1.35 worked well for them. 1.70 seemed for me seemed to be almost the default night. ...at any rate, while unlit dungeons or covered forests were always plenty dark/black enough for me, I do like the open-sky nights being a bit darker at least, vs. almost day time with a heavy blue filter.

^ I have never seen the entire animated Disney Peter Pan. A lot of clips of it. On the flip side, I do not recall if I've ever read the original book work either. If I did, it was when I was very little in my early voracious reading tot phase, so to speak. I think more likely I read some illustrated children's book based on Disney's movie, or something similar. It's strange that I can't recall but I'm aware of the basic story and history (and that Disney's version, like a lot of Disney versions, are quite different). Mostly I just find the whole premise a little dull, even with cynical underpinings. I think my abandonment/mixed race adoption/dysfunctional family stuff makes me often unable to relate or empathize to a lot of fiction re: young children, family loyalty or family "because family" bonding, etc. I'm warped that way.

That Peter Pan film trailer just looks like another average, cgi, youth/young adult adventure movie. Doesn't look terrible or special in any way. That said I'll do my usual qualifier that I'm also not a big fan of that story in general, nor a big fan of modern day young adult films. Also, maybe it's good. Can't tell anything from most action-y trailers anymore except whether it maybe has some good cgi visuals. >.>

I may suddenly be at least a little re-interested. ...you can't actually have more than one. To get the first screenie I dismissed one, and ran alongside him while he was walking away to teleport. Using this mod alone, not all will cast spells. Sadly the headmaster was one of those, what a stuffy dunderhead. Prof. Sharp however, cast spells and cursed. That's the only two I've tried so far. They both said a few lines as we wandered, probably lines they'd say if you encountered them in Hogwart's, nothing special. I'd guess some would be total silence tho. ...do not have one out during their actual quests, dismiss them first. This mod doesn't duplicate the NPC's, it teleports them to you.

Hufflepuff's common area is prettier than Ravenclaw's. Well, at least imo. I think House choice changes one or two quests a bit, common room, dominant outfit color schemes, stuff like that. But playing through the early must-do stuff again is feeling ... not worth it, to me. I could always just YT it. I did like that when you make a new character, you get a whole new set of the full 8 or whatever it is save slots for each one. Separated. So that's nice. Oh, difficulty setting affects other stuff than only combat, not sure if I mentioned that before. Like how much speed-time you have to not fail learning a new spell, other small stuff like that. I wonder if anything timed/reactive speeds up with some kind of base multiplier, combat and puzzles alike.

Well I became tired of trying to 100% some stuff so I finally did the last Main Quest in Hogwart's. On Normal, it was probably the easiest final fight I've encountered. It was visually fun tho and the whole game was combat-easy so it fits in. I don't think their intended/expected audience was Dark Souls aficionado's (which I'm not one of those, either) so it's all good and I can appreciate a game that doesn't constantly sweaty-palm stress me out at all, if that makes sense. I definitely feel like this is an adventure/light puzzle/story game more than anything else. Anyway, time to try that Hufflepuff start.

Yeah I've heard that. Also that ... Accio? re: it using WL automatically if you hold it, worked too. But I wasn't able to do a thing with WL on them. I've seen others say the same...probably another one of those minor intermittent bugs. I'm still waiting for a Rescue Biscuit fix that's not 3rd party save file editing. I would like to rescue Biscuit.

Yeah that crossed my mind too. Eps. 7 the pacing felt off/lingered too repetitively for its point. I'm sure they wanted to do "justice" to the DLC content but it's a case where the more semi-contained episodic nature of the show may have backfired a bit, imo.