LadyCrimson

My problem for a while now has been multiplayer/online focus. Even if a game can be played single, the online focus design still intrudes way too much in one way or another, far as I'm concerned. I like big open world-ish games for exploration/discovery and inventory management aspects (and I remember how few such games there were, once) but yeah, the way many do them now has become too generic or hodge-podge for the moment. Trying to hit all the demographics or whatever.

In the near future we'll have a "Stuff I got dressed up for and watched in an actual theater" thread and the rest will go into a "Stuff I watched in my underwear while sitting on my couch" thread.

Personally, I think that new Cage movie Willy's looks hilarious. I'm sure the film as a whole will be mediocre at best, but I mean that any scene with Cage one-lineing and beating up whatever will be gold. And I loved Drive Angry ... although I tend to think of that movie as William Fichtner's Drive Angry.

I was entertained and it works great fullscreen on your phone while lying on the couch. FAQ: Where was this first shown? A: Quibi, in 9 parts. That's why its filmed in this format. Summary: Serialized remake of 'The Princess Bride' told in short chapters featuring celebrities at home during quarantine. (description from IMDB) Cast:

My triglycerides went up again. Largely my own fault of course. Point is it's depressing. I'm simply not the type who wants to "work" to simply stay alive. I saw my father do that in a way for all his life (MS/quadriplegic) and while that was a lot worse of a thing, yeah. I don't have that type of mentality in me. Well, we shall see.

Finally got around to finishing up The Guest (via Netflix), a k-drama series from a couple years ago. Exorcism/possession/horror type show. Excellent series, with some great supernatural, thriller and occasional humor bits. The very ending was a little too tidy and a tad unsatisfying to me but nothing that ruins anything. All three leads were good and worked well together. The actor playing Priest Choi - Kim Jae-wook (I just call him Mr Cheekbones...) - I remember him playing the serial killer baddie in Voice. He's very good at intense roles. Altho he was also in a more recent fluff rom-com and good in that too. I think I prefer him in non-romance roles tho.

When you're bored of other things and wouldn't mind playing a game but still nothing appeals and you know you'd just turn anything off in 10 minutes anyway. My PC has just been an overpowered mp3 player recently. ...man there needs to be more solo/non-social/non-craft time-wasters for introverted homebodies like myself. I can just never think of anything. Maybe it's time to start buying all the (likely not as good) S. King novels I haven't read these past many years and plow through those. Or start renting a lot of B grade movies. I remember when I used to rent 6 movies at a time from Blockbuster (so $18+ back then) every weekend. I had a higher tolerance for mediocre movies once, when movies were more of a luxury vs. available everywhere constantly.

Discovered the webtoons (manga/visual novel etc) site because of a k-drama based on a webtoon (so I looked up the 'toon). Works great on the phone screen. Lots to casually read (even if most are "ongoing"/not finished), from sci-fi to thriller to romance etc. Works well with my current motivation level/mood. The side observation I've made tho comes from all the user comments at end of each episode of whatever. All these kids obsessed with getting "top comment" (kind of like "first!" I guess). I mean all the effort they seem to make to try to make a popular comment and then they edit and thank everyone for being top comment like they won an Academy Award (I sometimes see this on YouTube as well). I find this kind of sad for some reason. The whole culture of need/want approval in this fashion. I blame Facebook.

Technical, unmet expectations and broken promises aside, my surprise is reserved more for ... if a game is not heavily patched/tweaked in the first 2-4 weeks even when it "runs fine" out of the gate. Because even if it "runs fine" dev's can never stop changing, altering, rebalancing, adding to, or catering to "what the gamers want" (to keep up interest if nothing else), often to an extent where six months later it feels almost like a different game in a way. I am not saying this is a good or bad thing (depends), only that... Well, if BL4 is ever made, this time i am not buying it for at least two years after release. That's all. But yes, that video was rather lame for its purpose. I'm not really sure why they needed it either. Already knew about more "big" patches coming and all of that. Side note: I didn't know they were (at least originally) planning on having some form of MP for this game, until recently. Not that I'm interested in that, but ... it's kind of hard to picture. A separate mode perhaps that wouldn't feel at all like the solo game? Who knows.

Ah, ok. I never bother with stuff like that and just use what the package gives me. Always works fine so I don't think about it outside of that (and I don't even know how/ever tried to manually OC). That animated thing - that's on the card? How ridiculous. If the software has any way to turn that off (like you can turn off the RGB), I'd do it. But I suppose some may like the bling/find it funny etc. Whatever.

3080ti has supposedly been delayed until Feb (vs. Jan) now. Not that it matters since regardless of when, I'm sure hardly anyone will be able to get their hands on one for weeks/months. Edit: Oh, sorry, I was confused. It was a claim of "indefinitely delayed" from one of those popular video reviewers. I didn't find any text article verification of that tho.

My 2080ti has the single "cord" that (gpu end wise) separates into the two pin plugs, that go into the card. They are both plugged into the card and other end into the PSU. It works just fine/it's intended? The old 980ti had the same thing except the secondary pin/plug was smaller/less pins at the time. So I'm not sure what is meant by Humanoid's "go for two cables". Going by your picture I'd expect that both pin-plugs would need to be plugged into the gpu (eg, there is not one left dangling unconnected). But again, I may be misunderstanding/confused re: context here and per usual if that's the case, just ignore me....

Blood sugar is creeping upwards in the mornings again. Not tons, but guess I should give myself night shots again for a while. I kinda figured it would happen over a long enough time. Well, especially since I've been laxer and laxer with diet and exercise. Not extremely so, but enough so, haha. Made another lab appointment via hospital website for the bloodwork test they like to do - I'll probably get a generic "lecture" email about number backsliding a bit, hahaa. In the process I tried to see if there was any corona vaccine option yet. I'm not in a personal hurry for such, was just curious ... didn't see anything. Of course, I find their website horrible to navigate and figure out because I'm an old fuddy duddy who finds these things confusing nowadays. I can program entertainment devices but can't figure out websites or cellphones, lol (I still can barely remember how to use a cell to dial a phone #). I can't even figure out how to contact "my doctors" on their darn site. Links just take me to their general info pages with no contact links like an email etc. I remember they phone-spammed me with some cost-extra program that would let me talk to doc center ppl faster ("more urgent priority") or something and I told them to F off so they'd stop calling. They still spam my email constantly with "programs". My inbox is always full with their not-related-to-my-condition spam, it's stupid considering it's a hospital. Show me the money I guess. Whatever. Just give me my insulin when I run low. That's all I need. Edit: The whole hospital thing (services, contacts, how they do stuff) with Kaiser is soooo different from when I was a kid. 30-40 years ago I mean. And not for the better.

Mood: Semi-despondent. I've once again been mostly lying in bed for a few days, playing the tablet-slots or watching various k-dramas - on the tablet ... the big TV doesn't fit underneath the covers, you see. Also, eating too much chocolate and jam+crackers which my blood sugar is not happy about and right this moment I just don't care. Hubby: "You ate a whole box of those (Stoned Wheat Thins) crackers in less than half a day?" Me: *brushes crumbs off her nightshirt* "We have rats....?" Hubby: *stern voice/look* "I saw you were out of them but maybe I shouldn't have bought you any (on the way home)." ^ Hubby was largely not keeping track of what I was doing diet wise for a while. I think he's gone back on wife-watch alert.

I dunno about 'postmortem' but it does hit a lot of the main points that could be seen as negative, that aren't simply about bugs/glitches. Especially the open-world immersion/interaction and the "illusion of choice" - which should be noted is not the same as whether one thinks the story is good or well written etc. vs. not. If one was hoping for more choices matter tho, it's definitely lacking that. One of the (not very important) things I noticed was a thing re: street npc's and PhotoMode. I would see a scene, hit photo mode, and began noticing that npc's and cars in the scene would either change (car to a van, say) or completely disappear while in PhotoMode and either they would then show up again when coming out of PhotoMode or they would stay gone/changed. It's the first photomode in a game where I've seen that happen and it's very weird - making photomode feel more like a separate environment vs. a "game pause" type of thing.

Read about a new flying mod https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-flying-mod-lets-you-soar-over-night-city/ Became all excited, thought about screenshot oppurtunities. But it requires that Cyberenginetweaks mod. Downloaded/installed/created the directory for that but can't get it to work. Upgraded a VC redistrib. they said to do if it isn't working. Still doesn't work. Maybe there's another such file I need to update but no clue (I haven't fully "upgraded" Win10 in ages) and I'm not going to bother sussing it out just for a game mod. So I am left fly-less. Wah. Maybe it'll work for someone else tho. Screenshots if you do.

Based on all the comments, it's more than a "bit" buggy. A good effort but still largely unusable outside of goofing off or maybe non-combat walking screenshots. Anyway ... I totally understand wanting 3rd but I think I'll stick with first, unless they officially add it in at some point. What I wish this game had was a more permanent companion - and I don't mean in-your-head Keanu, but someone like Jackie with you all the time. Am I correct in assuming you only get paired with others for a mission and they disappear to "wait" for you somewhere else, if at all? Sigh. Makes me want to reinstall FO4 just to have the dog around again. I know! Cyber-dog companion DLC, anyone? I'd buy it.

Watched that History of Swear words or whatever it was, on Netflix with Nic Cage as the host etc. The first few episodes were fun enough ... I became less and less interested with each episode, even tho they're shortish, and by the last one I turned it off. Still, some chuckles were had so I'd call it successful enough. Then I watched some documentary called .. Minimalist? I think? ... a couple guys talking about their journey from "stuff will make me happy so I have to make money to get stuff" to "less stuff/stress makes me happy." Nothing one probably hasn't heard before (and they aren't extremists about it), but it did remind me I still had a lot of house clutter I still wanted to go through. So after a flurry, there's a moderate hill of "stuff" on the living room floor again. Thanks, show.

This seems as generic a thread to put this in as we have and might be of interest to anyone building "soon." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/business/economy/china-tariffs-exclusions-expire.html https://www.techpowerup.com/276796/asus-officially-increases-prices-of-graphics-cards-and-motherboards

...to be fair, they will (sometimes) have a head. But still very wonky running, gorilla arms, and other horrid or broken animation craziness.

I've started to buy nuts for the backyard squirrels again. Because apparently watching them from a distance is more entertaining than TV/gaming at the moment. Put out a plate and use binoculars/camera to watch them. It's been years since I made friends with a bunch of them (to get close/feed by hand), so I'd have to start all over again with the current crop. Not sure I'll go that far - I'm happy enough just watching. Also, apparently the large, weathered avocado seeds (from the neighbor's tree) confuse them and they'll pick them up (sometimes the same one repeatedly over days) and sit on the fence trying to crack them open for a few minutes before realizing it's not really a ... nut. It's hilarious.

So I was buying some (shelled) walnuts for the squirrels and realized that in all my life, in the common stores around where I live, I have never seen bags of "salted" walnuts. They are always raw or still in the shell. Not including candied/baked in goods versions, I mean. Peanuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, seeds, others - all have many roasted and salted (and flavored) types in cans and bags as well as raw. But not walnuts. I mean, I've never looked very hard for such, mind, but offhand never see them sitting next to all the other wal/nuts in stores. I looked online and apparently there are "roasted and lightly salted" walnuts ... now I must order some to find out what they taste like.

There should be "Star Trek Verse" and "Star Wars Verse" threads. I haven't watched anything Trek related in a long while, but I still have those OS and TNG Nitpickers guides in the bathroom and flip through those while doing my business. They were really the first series I spent so much time "studying", knowing names, history, and wanting to know all the ins and outs of the fake-tech and behind the scenes as well. I still have official "blueprints" of the ship somewhere. Have never gone to that extent with any other series, ever. Supernatural almost went there but was never quite realized.

Outside of the console performance stuff, all the commentary re: cut content and "expectations" and "not like the trailers from 3 years ago" reminds me a lot of the years-in-development FF-XV hoopla. Many of the same complaints, really. Edit: except XV *is* a lot worse in story cohesion etc, heh.

A lot of them are save games or Reshade modifications, as well. I usually only care about money, sometimes materials, no-damage (infinite health or regen type stuff I can use to just explore/combat w/out thought), any QoL mods (UI, speed, other). So something like WeMod just to save changes into a new savefile (then turning off WeMod) is good enough. Or CheatEngine tables. In Borderlands gun editors were really fun to make silly weapons with, but don't really care about that here. Just need health and a big bat. I think the main complaint (from such complainers) is that they'd rather have had a few dozen more long, well written, choice-matters/multiple result type of side quests than seemingly endless "kill gangsters for 5 minutes and loot their stuff" mini-quests every 100 feet. Which I can sort of relate to. But that's not exclusive to Cyberpunk - many open worlds have this problem. The constant phone call trigger method just reminds you of it rather intrusively vs. a static NPC with a ? over their head that you can simply run past and ignore (or maybe never discover in the first place). Of course, if there were less short filler quests and filler loot everywhere, then you'd have people complaining the world was too "empty" with no reward for exploration, or something. Edit: actually, now that I think of it, the phone calls do make me feel like there's less sense of "surprise discovery" in the game. I prefer walking into some house and suddenly encountering a situation and dialog/npc's needing help, and having to make a decision then, for example, vs. being told there's something to do over the phone because I'm standing in a certain alleyway.