LadyCrimson

Teddy's Haven (a fantasy shop simulator type game) - early access, single person dev, asset pack flip use I assume. Dev does small updates very frequently, like adding a new shop item, performance tweaks, other things. Recently he placed a giant new door into a rockface, purpose unknown. They've set it up where updates shouldn't require a new start, which is great. Haven't really played a "shop simulator" game before. They all mostly looked kinda boring/static, plus I don't care about being a mechanic or power wash or lawn care business. This one caught my attention because of the smallish "outside/world map" aspect, and cats and stuff. It has one of those (over time) repetitive loops (get resources to make stuff to sell/expand shop), and as you unlock/purchase more upgrades/crafting the loop becomes more interesting/fun. So it's charming, a bit funny, the fact you're not locked into a shop/can explore the small world is initially rewarding, and it's possibly the coziest of no pressure coziest. No time pressure, no combat, etc. There's no real challenge or boundaries (this is on purpose), it's a vibe, a design/deco shop layout, busy work. So it's been perfect for my current zone-out brain. Would I recommend it to the regulars of this forum? Nah. I mean, if such is your thing, it's a pretty good time waster. And it's cute. And has cats. And penguins, goats, giraffes occasionally show up to buy your wares, because I guess animals occasionally need a good dagger or two - which is funny. And you can buy this tiny Oreling, feed it excess stone, and it'll grow, and grow, and grow.....I'm still wondering if it has a size limit.

Apparently, Titans Quest 2 has decided, since they released Act2, that it warranted an Early Access price hike - from $29.99 to $34.99. Makes me guess when Act3 is added, it'll go up to $39.99. Does that mean at full release it'll be $49.99? I'm glad I bought it first thing, because while I'm interested to find out what it ends up as, I'm not that interested. Price hikes in the middle of early access feels odd to me, but the times, I guess. I haven't even played the early-access versions yet, outside of checking to see if it would run "ok" (it did).

Rented The Long Walk I think it's about as good as you're going to get (S. King (shorter) novel adaptation). It actually wasn't too bad. Even as someone who's read the novel countless times (one of my fave King bits), the changes they made to characters/ending were ok, because in some sense the ending and chrs. are rather interchangeable anyway, although I liked the more ambiguous ending of book better (kinda like The Mist in that sense). The actors were pretty good, with one or two standouts. But it was all kind of dull. Not surprising - without inner monologue of a novel, it's just a bunch of dudes walking and walking, occasionally talking/bonding, with moments of sudden (and pretty graphic) violence. I didn't get the huge sense of bond/loss from the film like I did with the book. Again, not unexpected. If one hasn't read the novel tho, it might be more affecting. Anyway - for a book adaptation (and a King one at that, haha), maybe a 6/10.

--Mood: crabby, pessimistic, avoidant yet paradoxically also confrontational --Physical state: ok/adequate but maybe typical aging, post-menopausal and other such woes, 57, and oh hey am I finally starting to get slight eye bags and slightly droopy cheeks? Bummer. --Mental state: rut, exhausted, withering --Hubby's health (physical and mental): nothing super dramatic, but not great either. I think a lot about "what if's" lately. --Reason for writing/sharing: not sure. Just felt a brief need. That is all. I will aim for happy thoughts this week. And I will be replacing the awful kitchen faucet the house came with tomorrow. It'll be the 1st time trying it on my own - watched hubby twice over the years, and he can advise. Something small but mentally satisfying/productive, at least. Maybe I'll try fixing part of the shower's tile grout, too. Wish me luck.

Task - HBO, 3 episodes (hubby continued to watch another couple, but I wandered off) Not bad. I thought there would be a little more, y'know, detective-ing and crime-ing, but it's well acted and mostly well written and spends a lot of time developing characters. A lot of family-drama vibes on top of the crime-drama. Definitely worth a shot if that's a genre one likes. If I don't get around to watching more of it, that's more about me and my attention span/lack of daily interest in watching TV etc. Those first few episodes were certainly interesting enough.

Oh, come on, I never said I was "against" upscaling, at least not in any black and white way. I've used DLSS-Quality plenty of times by now and I've said it's improved enough that Quality or sometimes, maybe, Balanced, is acceptable image wise. That's useful for extending life of a system. But going to extremes with upscaling just to play a game, losing tons of image quality, the ability for the image to look good on a larger screen, and all the artifacting/input delay/other stuff if you have to take upscaling/other too far = no. I'm just not that desperate to play those kind of titles on release. And I'm aware re: 2080ti. Never tried to imply my gpu is some total potato? Why do you think I haven't upgraded it yet? It still works for most titles/things. As to "surviving" AAA/UE5. lol. Having to build a new rig/system periodically is the way it is. Been doing that for decades now, of course. You're making it sound like I'm saying I never want to upgrade ever ever again. That's not it. I don't want to upgrade right now when it's obvious even current hardware won't last long/isn't enough for these games (even WITH upscaling), for the ridiculous prices of said hardware. The dev's will get better at using UE5 (and/or UE5 will improve, or another engine will take over in a few years, or), hardware will improve a little (probably not tons), and so on, if I wait. Or one can play some such games at 900p/30+fps on a 570 (saw a video with that, heh). That's not my style anymore tho - because I like bigger screens, not because I'm some mega-resolution or fps nut. If 1080 still looked great (to me) on a 55", I'd use it. But it doesn't. And if I had to upscale on top of that, even worse. Such is up to users preferences.

omg, rofl at the horrible side/distance grass shimmering while walking/running w/DLSS Performance, and their shadow noise with shadow settings examples etc is horrid. No thank you. Edit: eg, I'll wait.

This - assuming you don't get a defective one - seems more worth the $300 than that Fallout anniversary $160 edition thing. Of course, it's probably all sold out already. I'm sure there's some "cheapness" areas vs. a super accurate tabletop model, but if I was into collecting such, it'd be fun to have one sitting in a corner. 😄

Restless/bored enough was considering giving MS-Obsidian too much money to try-play their new game, but then saw UE5 and forum performance discussions. I suppose I could run it at DLSS Performance/mixed settings or 1080 native, or whatever, but for me that's nah, don't feel like it. No longer have a working 1080p 27" monitor, either. Another game to put on the "might try it if/when I build a new rig", list. Manor Lords update still in beta. 7 Days to Die 3.0 still nowhere in sight. Farthest Frontier now out of Early Access but I think there's still no "turn off food spoilage" freeplay setting. Back to NMS. The last planet I landed on had one of those terrain glitches, where a piece of earth was warped from bedrock to halfway up into the sky as a skinny triangular pillar. It even had grass growing on it on the sides. It was hilarious. I may have hit upon an extra glitched out area of the galaxy recently. I'm waiting for some glitched out fauna with three heads on the side of its body or something.

Tried two episodes of Typhoon Family (k-drama, netflix). Mostly because ever since Rain or Shine (melodrama-rom, with a background seemingly inspired by the collapse of Sampoong Dept. Store) I will try anything with Lee Jun-Ho (he's a member of 2PM/singer) in it as a lead. King of the Land (pure rom com) was fun at the start but fell off for me midway and The Red Sleeve (rom-drama) was fairly decent even tho I'm tired of Joseon-era settings. Rain or Shine is the best (main lead) series of his imo, tho. Anyway - this new one is more of a period/business/relationship drama+romance. The period is the late 1990's, so that's fine for me, during that era's financial crisis. Rich boi loses richness/faces tragedy and tries to make it in the aftermath. It seems pretty good, but not sure it's fitting my mood. I'll give it my usual 4 episodes try. Many at dramabeans seem to love it, so my reservation is likely my usual grumpy old fart-ness. >.> Lee Jun-Ho and Kim Min-ha are both great tho.

Does anyone else find it a little emotionally odd to see "available on battlenet" in the Outerworlds 2 forum banner? I know re: MS/Activision and bnet trying to reinvent itself a bit etc but I mean I still think Diablo1-2/MP when I read battlenet. I wonder if eventually it'll just become kind of another storefront option for MS.

Nah, just being out of the Corvette and jet pack space flying around in space. Typically not much use for that new function outside of "visuals, neat" but Expedition has ppl looting "space wrecks" POI's that way.

Well, I did say it was cute, not accurate. To me all that sort of thing is like wanting a replica of Toothless, realizing a super great/artistic one would be expensive or hard to find/always sold out b4 you know about it, and just getting a plushie that only vaguely resembles. Easier to hug anyway. Actually, maybe they should have just done a plushie robot.

Me, they impacted at age 17ish, my face swelled up like a hamster with stuffed cheek pouches, and the pain was bad for 24 hrs, but I went out the same afternoon for Chinese food (well, I ate a little soup I guess) anyway. Because I was 17ish and hanging with friends was more important than anything, haha. Hope the recovery continues to go well and you can eat something tasty now. At least, like with an appendix removal, you can now know that it's a possible health issue cause that can never apply, again. 😄

Of course NMS releases their new Expedition yesterday. I normally don't do those but this one hard-gates some new Corvette building pieces behind it. I could wait for a save editor to checkmark "finished expedition" stuff but thought I'd try. I did finish (took about 10 hrs with a new chr vs. importing in item help from existing save) but it was a reminder of why I usually don't do them. They're always very similar in terms of "scan 10 fauna, fish 10 fish, kill a certain monster, loot a derelict freighter, go to this new system, checkmark, now repeat new short missions in this system" for 5ish "stages." Even if you don't have to do it all in order it's still very repetitive. It might be fun once but do them a lot and it feels too same-y. And usually the rewards are mostly cosmetic and not worth the hours spent. But I guess I have the new parts unlocked now. 😛

Far as I know Steam version does. So would GoG's version but I don't know if they've done any GoG-ifying. But yeah - would have to be a mega-mega-megax10 fan to pay for that. I mean, the "statue" is cute but not $160 cute. Maybe $20 at best (the statue alone). And it's still digital, not even a "hard" copy. Although they do give you a "A throwback-style display box " to put on a shelf. I was wondering why there seemed to be so many "FONV is the best FO" type videos in my YT algo lately.

Probably less time than Win7 vs. Win10, but I wouldn't worry about it much for 2-3 years. And even then probably mostly AAA/AA, and/or initially mostly the "we won't support your bug reports" vs. "game absolutely won't run." I mean, look how long it took Steam to make Win7 not work with their client (supposedly, never tried). They all know lots of people refuse to go over for a long time. I've been looking into Linux (for gaming) again and I guess for me it might be something like Mint vs. Bazzite. Linux for everything but gaming, I'm sure I'd have no issues with, outside of maybe my ancient fave and simple image editor might not work. But Linux for gaming - I don't know. I know most things these days work or can be made to work but there's always certain titles that won't, not including MP/anti-cheat dev linux support issues (since I don't MP). So it always feels like I'd have to go back to multiple PC setups, switchboxes and/or extra displays etc again for outlier cases, and I really don't want to. Edit: getting too old for that kind of stuff

This mod might make trying to play Skyrim again worthwhile. Well, for about 30 minutes at least. At any rate, quality mod, I tell ya.

Well, finally ran across my own colliding planet system in NMS. I knew of them, but it's rare. Sadly, since every planet is its own "instance", so to speak, you cannot run across from one to the other. The closer you get to the collision line, the more the game felt like it wanted to crash, lol. The world you're on stayed "tilted" in perspective, too - like it's stuck in a sense - vs. the illusion of horizon moving so you feel land stays level. Neat to see "in person" tho.

In regards to games, it's no longer all about "WoW's servers are down" or "my personal ISP is down" - it's now AWS or Google or whoever else is down. 7 Days forum (and some other games) was full of "can't connect/can't play" - I would guess for 7 Days, Epic Online Services (which 7 days now uses for crossplay and other online features) was connected to AWS in some way - I disabled 7Days EoS myself ages ago, since I only SP, btw. When something way worse than this time goes down, it's gonna be fun. People forget how fragile and wholesale/controlled by too few companies, the whole 'net interconnection stuff is.

Heheh, just a bit. Yeah, I only have lowly Win10Pro. 😄 I could probably get Ent. stuff from hubby but that wouldn't be our style anymore. I think Win7-Pro was the first Windows I paid for, then Win10-Pro. Before that hubby just kept bringing it home (win 3.1 et al). He also deals with network firewall stuff (working from home precautions = more than average I'm guessing) so I rarely do much with that outside of Windows settings and being very discriminate re: downloading and net presence. ======== Going Sideways: I was reading about Discord and their recent security/user data breach stuff. I remember when the advice was to never give real info on the net if you don't have to, because identity theft. I would still consider that good advice. From that to "send us photo ID's over the internet to confirm your age/person." FFS. Any social media or general net service that wants me send them a copy of my legal ID cards etc is a service I don't need. If Steam ever starts doing that (I don't care why) it's being uninstalled.

You sound a bit like me. Did you use powershell to de-bloat it/get rid of all those stupid MS apps/programs, too? 😛 I updated the main "version" of W10 once, when a game demanded it. Haven't bothered since. Still works fine. At some point a game will demand something re: Win11, even if it's "only" version DX142.75 or some MS Visual C++ version or something similar. But until then.