LadyCrimson

Since Amazon Fresh is working great again I haven't been "outside" the house in weeks ... except for some brief walks. But finally went to Nob HIll yesterday ... bought a deli sandwich and a small package of thin crispy cookies. When you haven't had any cookies in months ... best cookies evah. Unrelated: what I like about my tablet - when I'm watching a video, it's not interrupted by a spam phone call.

*scratches head* I'm unsure if "choice of game" is the name of a game you're playing or if you are referring to what I (or someone else) am playing.

At least you get what looks like some decent decorative items. There are some in 7 Days but many you have to go into the "creative/dev" menu to grab from there - they're not normally craftable by players. I will try Valheim one day ... but going to wait a year or so and see what happens/what it turns into, first.

Oh sure, new thread right as I was hitting reply. Messing up my quote... @melkathi "I want to write my own cyoa/adventure/vn." ...every time I play a game that I like but wish had "a few things different", I want the skills to program so I could make my own game that's tailored toward only my wants (cause I'm selfish like that). But even if I could, I know by the time I actually finished it (years later) ... I'd be so sick of thinking about the thing I'd never play it. Thus I stick to something like 7 Days where I can simply mod the heck out of the .xml files to suit me. I'm having fun with the extra large no-zombie bedroll zone, since I still have to clear out the houses/POI's and monitor my 'activity/heat map' increases re: screamer spawns, which having zombies totally off would negate/remove. Sadly, none of this alleviates my issue of growing bored of a map/save after about 10-16 "days" and wanting to start a new map.

A while back I noticed this little thing in hubby's office, that I at first thought was some router or whatnot: It's one of those mini-PC's. Apparently his work has been giving those to workers who don't have good enough computers needed to do their work/networking from home so he has one to test it etc. I think they run around $200-$400 depending on ram and power and the like. Obviously not for gaming, but more general desktop tasks. Anyway, for some reason I want one now.

But do you have a lap pool? No zombie apocalypse is going to deprive me of my comforts, darnit!

That's still one of my fond personal faves. Others: "Yesterday's Enterprise" "Deja Q" "Q Who" "The Most Toys" (cause Data, and Saul Rubinek) "Lower Decks" "Clues" Looking back at it there's so many mediocre episodes but even many of those at least had nice character moments or funnies. I remember the first time they put Troi in a regular Starfleet uniform and I was all "she looks fantastic/professional that way, she should wear that more often instead of the stupid leotard pants outfit" (which I didn't think even flattered her that much, outside of the low cut neckline I suppose). Eventually she did wear a uniform more often.

I had to sign the tax papers the other day and hubby, observing my taking off finger splints, told me soon I'll need a rubber 'X' stamp, pffft. You can get adequate at using your stupid hand for a lot more things but (for me anyway) penmanship isn't one of them. This morning I woke up having the use the bathroom and when I got back into bed my brain said "nope too late not sleepy now" ... so I got up again and fiddled with game things. Now it's time for a short walk, food, and then ... a nap?

See those white lines at the top edges? Giant bedroll "no spawn" area size. I have found the way! Enter debug mode, type "setgamepref BedrollDeadZoneSize whatevernumberyouwant" Tested it, seems to work on POI spawning as well as surface random walkers, unlike buggy land claim blocks. Have to retype it every time you reload but works fine. I can cover the entire map size but I think medium town size will be good enough to not have to go crazy building walls of China - just walls around around main rooms.

Hmm how to explain concisely: For total overkill design protection and AI control: Yes. Current zombie AI: if a horde (or any zombie) senses you and wants to find you, they will take the fastest/shortest route to the weakest defense closest to you. Dirt/sand is soft and digging a tunnel thru it may be considered "easiest path" vs. walking around or over a hill/mountain. A barrier at least 2-3 blocks high (they can't jump like the player) and going 2 blocks into the ground should/would make them walk around the whole thing to attack a weak door or purposefully left opening instead. So current "meta" for those who like the periodic tower defense aspect are funneling hallways. Edit: note with the size/number of map chunks I'm using, this is kind of unlikely but ... overkill ...ofc you can also create a tiny "horde" base full of z-attractants like forges and cooking fires and just stand on top of it like Conan, waiting for them to show up, and then jump from ground to platforms like a madman parkour expert if you want to fight/test your whacking skills for hours. Not what I'm doing, tho.

One of my parents neighbors used to take an annual salmon fishing run. He'd return home with both smoked canned salmon and not-canned smoked salmon (some was done where he fished, some he did in a backyard smoker). He'd always give some to my mother. Best smoked salmon ever. And I'm not a fish eating person.

Please excuse the terrible image, the game looks funky when flying way way up high. But that yellow circle? That's the outer wall I want to make, with all inside being a zombie-spawn free zone. This afternoon I started ... to think maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew. >.> But my 'city park' zone is coming along nicely! I forgot I can plant trees - that also helps beautification. I wonder if the zombies can 'spawn' in water. They can walk in it, not sure about spawning...

I'll just bring the mountain climbing gear, then.

This too shall pass. Maybe. Someday. Probably before I'm dead at any rate.

...you'd probably get a neck cramp trying to look down at the top of my head. If we ever meet in real life, do I have permission to ask you how's the weather up there? Most of the time I feel like they recommend the entire video collection of a single author because 3 minutes ago I watched one of their videos.

When it's too big to get a good, full screenshot. This is not a zombie-horde defense home, btw. Those would be more spartan and combat functional. Building a couple of those a few game-chunks away from this thing. Just sayin'. See that hill that I'm building the planter boxes on? I'm going to cover the entire thing with those and porches and the like, then build another "house" at the top, which will have a height-walkway from one to the other. The farm-plot squares are at least not all-concrete and look better with the plants in them. Maybe that'll work for zombie spawn prevention. I'll think of something...

Oh? They don't seem that large to me. Edit: unless you mean the originals, if you edited those posted. At any rate, y'all know I'm just ribbing GD.

Dear Guard Dog: not that I personally care about multi-posting at all, but you can post more than one pic in a post, y'know. Looks like a lovely spot for a walk/whatever, tho! In other "news" - my PC hasn't spontaneously rebooted since I changed the cooler, confirming in my mind that was the problem. Also, I really like that Noctua cooler. I assume I didn't get the most uber version possible (D15S, it's all black!) which is fine since I don't manually OC (CPU just does that varied volt/oc on its own) but no game has gone over 55C, even cpu-intensive unity games . BL3 sits around 43C. If the fan starts to wear/get noisy in some years years I'll just buy a new one. I wonder how well the less tall ones would fare.

It's March. Days are a little longer, the weather is starting to get a tad more pleasant - although we could still have some "winter weather" days - so soon I can start getting my long evening walks again. I know, I could technically do those any time, but I like near-dusk to dusk walking, and I like dusk to not be at "rush hour" periods so it's quiet-ish. Late spring to late fall, best walkin' time. This felt like a slow/dreary winter. Stuck in ruts. But it's not a great time for any pleasure/change of pace travelin' either, outside of packing into the woods maybe.

Well that's too bad. I did spend a while placing a bunch to test it out (no spawning on while doing so, then turned spawning on). The random wilderness ones definitely were spawning. They're the ones I wish would go away or were spaced out a lot farther. I feel like in single-player one should be able to have 3 active bedrolls at once maybe, and you could click to set one to be the current respawn point, something like that. And yeah, the replace every block with a player-block is what we all did in the past, but I read a lot of posts saying that doesn't apply/work at all anymore, or isn't reliable/maybe is bugged, and if you build on a quest spot without realizing it and trigger the quest it'll respawn that whole chunk wholesale down to bedrock and stuff like that. Plus I don't want a giant city of nothing but concrete, even if you can "paint" blocks now, and it's a ton of work to do that. >.> I used to alter all the entity stats and group spawning .xml's to personal taste and individual z-type chance rates but it's way too much work now. I typically don't like other's mods because they never fit what I truly want. Oh well, back to just plain "all off" or at least blood moon's off, most of the time, then.

Still 7 Days/A19. I have discovered ... how to enable the use of multiple land claim blocks. LCB's are what you can use to define a smallish (relative to world size anyway) area where zombies cannot directly spawn (from sky to bedrock, square shaped), so you can have at least one base without z's popping into existence right in the middle of it, right. But you can only have one active at a time (place another one, first one "breaks"). There's also the portable bedroll, but same applies (so you could have two "base spaces" per map) but bedroll is also for designated - vs. random - respawn point so you'd rather the bedroll be for temporary placement. This severely limits "castle size" for us builders since you don't want z's spawning inside your workshop or a wall, say. Anyway, you can change number of active LCB's in the registry entries for the game. So now I can build ... 32! Ok, now I can REALLY make a fortress. Turn a whole town into one! I wonder if there's a limit even with registry. Could I have 10,000? Claim the entire map except for allowing small pockets of zombie hunting zones? BWHAHAHA.

So I ran this game for the 1st time in a while to test some hardware, and the first time looking at resource monitors while doing so in a long time. Even with moderate ray tracing on, I noticed it was only using about 50-60% of CPU (on most cores, no core/thread was anywhere near maxed out) and maybe 30-40% gpu utilization. Is it that low for anyone else? I can't remember if it was always like that. The fps playing is about the same tho, maybe a tad more stable. Just seems like GPU utilization should be higher considering the game? No big deal, just felt weird.

Ok got one of those Noctura or howyaspellit coolers - this is why I still like walk-in stores. Sometimes ya want something NOW. Seems to be nice and quiet (when new anyway) and effective (at least the fan speed didn't increase loudly with a game on). Not actually 100% sure that was the reason for rebooting but it would make sense right. If it was leaking it was itty bitty, couldn't really see anything obvious on the little waterblock/tubing itself, gpu seems fine outside of the dark stain. Could've been doing a micro-droplet every hour for weeks till it became enough that every 24 hours or so something went poof. Who knows. We'll see if it keeps self-rebooting now. Cross fingers. I need a CPU temp monitor now. Most of the ones people always say to use for some reason never work on my PC. By that I mean, they install/open but do not detect/display any information.

pc rebooted itself again while I was sleeping. Hubby looked at event viewer for me, no conclusions beyond usual general maybes. Then I looked in case and noticed a darker spot on top of gpu near an edge. I think the cpu cooler thingie is leaking. Took 2 years. >.> so looking for a coil heat sink now. pffffffffffft. Knew I shoulve stuck to one of those in the first place. Hopefully thats it.

I care little about either that game series or EA, but still find this good.