Humanoid

After seeing the prices of all the next-gen stuff that's likely going to be out this year, and accounting for the Australia tax on top of them, I'm shelving my plans for a new PC this year. I was already pretty dubious after seeing the 5600X price, despite it having the same effective official price as the US, but that was contingent on everything else coming together just right. RTX 3070 example: $499 USD plus 10% tax comes out to $780 AUD. The official local price is $809. It's just launched now and the cheapest available model is $899 for one specific model from one retailer with bugger-all availability. The majority are well over four-digits in price. And given that's the cheapest of the announced next-gen cards, this is the point where I officially fold. I'll target a 5600 non-X and either a 3060-series or 6700-series card next year I think. In the meantime, I'm instead going to pivot towards getting myself a couple of new monitors. My ancient U2711 is officially dying - it's been acting up and requiring a power cycle pretty often for a couple years, but now the colour deterioration is becoming increasingly obvious - notably in the blue sub-pixels. I just recalibrated it yesterday and with the colour balance settings, and with blue pegged to 100, both red and green have to be dropped down into the 60-70 range just to get the standard 6500K colour balance. And partly as a consequence of that, at 100% brightness the screen is not bright enough to hit the calibration target. While I'm replacing that monitor, and with Black Friday looming, I figure I may as well double-down and replace my primary monitor, an Asus MG279Q which I never truly liked. Its limited FreeSync functionality was never worth the loss in image and build quality over the two Dell Ultrasharp models that flanked it (a U2715? and the aforementioned U2711), and all of its controls are idiotically placed on the backside of the monitor so I have to give it a reacharound to even turn it on. So yeah, in for a penny, in for a pound: I'm pretty certain I'll be picking up one each of a Dell S2721DGF (a gaming monitor with the usual trimmings) and a S2721DS (their basic IPS screen, only difference to the $20 cheaper S2721D is that the stand is adjustable). Neither are "premium" models like the Ultrasharps, but I think with calibration the difference should be largely negligible. Only complaint is that the DGF looks tacky as hell from the back, with utterly pointless strips of blue LEDs that fortunately can be turned off. Based on recent Prime Day pricing I can pick up both for about $800 combined, still less than the RTX 3070. Yeah...

I want All-in-Wonder mode.

Double post

Interesting and all that, but my playground will probably be in the 6700/XT vs 3060/Ti battle. Said before that I'm okay with stretching to ~50% more than I've ever paid for a video card before, and while that's negotiable to an extent, every single option from both vendors is over +100% of that price. Doesn't help that the local RRP for the 3070 was inflated in relative terms: in the US, a 3070, Xbox SeX, and PS5 are all the same price, yet the 3070 lands at $60 more than the consoles here.

Likely no one is surprised as I am that I'm playing Pillars of Eternity. I don't like RTwP, I don't like party management, I don't like inventory management, and I've only really ever tried to play the game briefly when it first launched. And yet despite all that, here I am playing it. The situation came about mostly because of my irritation at BG3 - not the unpolished state it's in but rather some of the fundamental DnD-oriented design decisions. Reading up on some feedback about the game I happened to be reminded that PoE2 now has a turn-based mode, something that has completely slipped my mind. I didn't know whether such a thing would also be in PoE1 so I fired it up and had a poke around. My save was dated 2017 but I suspect it was just an aborted attempt at resuming the game that might have lasted half-an-hour at best. Anyway, continuing my old save finds me still in Gilded Vale - yes that's as far as I've ever gotten - having apparently just begun the small dungeon in town. I am a rogue, as is my custom, and I remember not particularly enjoying it because the game isn't built for sneak killing enemies one by one like say, a Thief, Deus Ex or Dishonored. Hell, I remember Valygar being a hell of a lot more effective in BG2, though that might be his high level plus 20 years of dead brain cells talking. At any rate, the resulting feeling that it was barely worth using stealth is probably a big reason I ended up dropping out pretty fast the first time around. I don't want to restart though, I'm comfortable with the character in a roleplaying sense - and have just been living with the fact that all I'm doing with stealth for now is to open fights with a sneak crossbow shot. I had hoped that I could be completely hands-off with controlling the companions in combat, but regrettably this has not been the case and they tend to just twiddle their thumbs until I at least order them to get closer. Without micro-managing further than that, the combat is proving to be plenty challenging especially since the early companions seem to be of the squishy variety, one aside. Only after a full day of playing and getting to the point of claiming the player stronghold did I realise that the difficulty was set to Normal, instead of the Easy that I assumed it was on. I guess 2015 me was a bit less of a wuss than 2020 me. I don't think I'd get near to finishing the game in Normal so I think I'll be toggling it down next session. Aaaanyway, the game is playing okay for now. I won't say I'm having a great time but it's passable. I might decide to drop it at any moment to try out the turn-based mode in the sequel but I figure I'll give it at least the weekend to see if I can get into a groove.

The third-party stores also now offer the Steam key version, and it looks like the cheapest among them are Gamebillet and Indiegala at 60% off each, so save a little bit more on top. Both are official stores, no problems there. If you want the GOG version you'll have to settle for 50% off though.

But what you're truly missing is the ability to throw water bottles across the dressing room.

Clearly it was the BLAND corporation this time.

Ultima 8: The Lost Vale

So there's been an unfortunate snafu with the first major patch being issued, withdrawn, and then reissued, causing a fair few installation problems for some people - myself included. In the end Galaxy's handling of it was rather suboptimal to say the least: it ended up downloading more data to finally fix the installation than it would have just reinstalling the game from scratch. Something in the order of 100GB. Normally that wouldn't be an issue for me, but this month it ended up blowing up my download limit and I've been reliant on phone tethering all weekend as a result. Ugh. On the plus side, it was the final push I needed to switch my ISP this month. I was going to do so next month anyway as my current one is going to push through an extortionate $25/mo price hike for the same service after my next billing cycle, so I've just shifted the move up one month.

The G700 is probably the worst mouse I've ever bought. It was on a fairly steep discount to be fair, and I was still playing MMOs at the time so the extra buttons had some appeal. Unfortunately the battery life was measured in days at best, compared to months (or even a year) for my previous MX1100 or at least weeks for my current MX Master. Probably something to do with an increase in polling rate because of the "gaming" factor, but I've never cared about that. Nowadays the extra buttons just get in the way, and the shape, while similar to most other Logitech premium mice, is marginally less comfortable than I'd like. I think the bottom end is maybe just a bit too bulbous, same as how I feel about PS4 controllers come to think of it. I quite like trackballs too, I use them with laptops whether it be at work or at home. I think the association comes from my first experience with a trackball being on my dad's 66MHz Compaq laptop back in the day. These days I've found the ability of the current Logitech MX Ergo trackball to be invaluable in my bedroom HT setup, as I need to control both the NUC and the laptop pretty much at the same time, and being able to switch between them at the touch of a button is godly. Before that, I had two separate but identical trackballs for them (the venerable M570) which was more than a little confusing.

I like be quiet!'s (geez that's a typing nightmare) coolers and PSUs, but find their cases a bit tacky. Not Thermaltake/Coolermaster/etc level tacky, but weirdly overdesigned. Went with a Noctua cooler this time entirely for price reasons, which is a criterion they normally lose to Scythe - a special meant I could get their 14cm version for what 12cm coolers normally sell for. They do sell black versions of their product these days, though you pay extra for the privilege. For me though, even if I had a case with a window, my home office layout means the window would sit uselessly against the inside of my desk, and I'd lose out on the sound dampening material on the regular side panel. Anyway, hopefully the next step isn't too hard, but I haven't started looking. Good RAM that doesn't have a uselessly tall heatsink.

My journey towards a new PC started yesterday with a couple of piecemeal purchases. A 2TB Crucial MX500 SATA SSD (from Amazon UK) and a Noctua U14S (from Newegg Taiwan) will be arriving in the following weeks. No rush on the build as such though - as I've said before, the schedule will probably be dictated by AMD's release calendar beyond this first wave of Zen 3 CPUs so it may well run into the new year. In the meantime I'll just ready the parts that aren't likely to age while I wait. I'll plug the SSD into my current system immediately of course, replacing one of the 250GB ones currently in there since I'm out of SATA ports and it's not worth buying a SATA expansion port for short-term usage. That means my SSD storage will consist of a 500GB SATA M.2 system drive, plus 1x2TB, 1x1TB and 2x250GB 2.5" disks. That's probably enough for a few years yet so I'll likely migrate all four of those SATA disks to the new system to live alongside a new NVME system drive. (I should probably go look up how many SATA ports current B550 boards typically have) Next purchases will probably be a case and PSU, but I'm a bit worried since I'm back working at the office now and without a car would have some difficulty lugging a case from the local post centre if I miss the initial delivery. Nonetheless the likely candidates are probably a Fractal Design Define 7 in white (because my current Define case is black) and a be quiet! Straight Power 11, if the current special I see on it is still current by the time I'm ready to order. Otherwise maybe the ol' reliable Corsair RM750X. Rest of the system is far more volatile of course but in terms of price guidance I'll probably look to the hypothetical 5600 or 5700X CPU depending on value, and whatever Navi model ends up competing pricewise between the 3060 and 3070. P.S. I believe the only two motherboards I've used which have ever died were both MSI. But to be fair to them, one was on my Pentium 3 600, and the other on an Athlon XP I built for my parents.

Finally made some time to get started after buying it on GOG via VPN for the equivalent of about $50AUD (~$37USD). Bit naughty I know but I've never paid the full $90AUD RRP for the regular edition of a game and I'm not about to start now. Besides, it'd be silly if I paid full price now and then also bought the CE on actual launch, which I'd be inclined to do if the game turns out good. Strong "if" though. I probably don't have anything particularly new to say that hasn't already been said in this thread. Performance on my 290X is spotty (and using Vulkan absolutely tanks the framerate), especially outdoors. Playing co-op only and there's a really annoying bug where the game constantly thinks the other player is engaged in dialogue, which is resolved by actually starting and ending another dialogue. All this is perfectly forgivable for an Early Access game of course, but are the biggest obstacles to enjoying the game as-is. I came into the game not knowing anything about 5E (or indeed 4E) but it doesn't seem all that complicated, but then as a rogue there's probably not much complexity to be had. Took a moment to figure out the spell memorisation later when I got control of the spellcasting NPCs. I'm also failing checks harder than XCOM, and I think in the final game I might look for a mod to just make all the checks static ones as per the Obsidian philosophy. Another thing carried from D:OS, particularly the first one, is that it's not particularly clear at all in which sequence you should tackle the content. It's very easy to just get funneled into the dungeon full of level 2 enemies while there's still a lot of level 1 content outside. Indeed it's fully possible to stumble into it without a full party if playing single-player, because while all the companions in this version are technically accessible almost immediately, you need a bit of luck or foreknowledge to get the right ones for your party balance before blundering into a challenging encounter. If you know where they are, only one is non-trivial (by being behind a big fight). In the end, my biggest concern for the game remains unchanged from what it was before I played this version. That the DnD licence would be a straitjacket on gameplay. The D:OS games may be somewhat divisive for pure roleplayers, but as co-op games they were unmatched, and I think the restrictions of DnD mechanics makes the emergent gameplay lose some of that magic. P.S. Get rid of the stupid lootable vases already, ugh.

Would have liked to see more than one model in the mainstream price range, but oh well. I'm not targeting any sort of performance benchmark, happy with grabbing the best value "decent" CPU in my price range which will probably be $300-500AUD. The 5600X will land at the top of that range so other, older options can't be ruled out. I don't know if that's rational, but my desire to build a new PC isn't rational in the first place, coming from a 6700K. I just can't be bothered dealing it anymore and want a fresh start. But that thing cost me about $500AUD and I have no intention on spending more than that on a CPU no matter how good it is (disregarding future decades worth of inflation of course).

"Axis Football" just makes me thing of Escape to Victory to be honest.

Was idly trying out some of the more recent additions to the NES and SNES Switch Online libraries. The best addition by far was Mario's Super Picross (or was that Super Mario's Picross?). Anyway, it's a hell of a gateway drug and being able to do the puzzles co-operatively is a blast. It's drop-in multiplayer at that, where the second player just needs to hit any input on their gamepad and it's automatically activated, no faffing about in menus required, which is a good thing because it's one of the games they didn't bother translating before dropping it onto the service. This is the opposite of Tales of Berseria, which I've also been trying lately, which has one of the more horrifically cumbersome multiplayer implementations I've ever seen. Every time you start up the game you have to manually assign the second gamepad to the second player, then manually assign a character to that player. Oh, and it's one of those games where the multiplayer only gets enabled when you formally get a companion NPC a few hours into the game, despite there being temporary companions earlier. I get that the multiplayer is basically just an afterthought, but still, it could be a hell of a lot friendlier to use. Oh well, not in love with the game anyway and just about to drop it in favour of BG3. The mood of the game is probably best described as being bi-polar, a lot of the NPCs are insufferable, and the combat is mostly button-mashing at this stage.

I thought there was something wrong with my computer with the update. Does look a little awkward, then I decided to just blow away the entire sidebar with uBlock and now with full width posts it looks tolerable.

If this was single player then I'd have huge reservations about it. But I'm desperate for more co-op RPGs (excluding ARPGs) so the question for me isn't whether to get it, but whether to risk going the full Brazilian to get this for about half the price. Hmm.

1.1.2 hotfix just released, looks like it resolves the issues that were stopping me from playing. Nice that they're willing to do these smaller fixes after having to wait so long for some key ones previously. And nice timing too as it's a long weekend here.

I think its predecessor, Crime and Punishment, is generally considered the better game. Might want to try that one first if you can get it cheap. It's been free on EGS before but it looks like the best current deal is "only" 75% off on GamersGate.

And now I'm waiting for the patch for the patch. Generally welcome changes - unsurprising when there are 998 documented changes - but they did manage to spectacularly break claim inheritance so that women don't inherit claims at all, and therefore completely breaking the concept of marrying for claims. Y'know, the actual proper historical way to get claims instead of gaming conveniences like fabrication. Plus they didn't fix the super frustrating levy replenishment bug.

Ian for trapping me in corners and spraying me in the back with an SMG. Iolo does this too with a triple crossbow but the game runs too fast to really notice it happening. Personality-wise it's gotta be Miranda and her (skimpy) plot armour.

No, just a lot of disk partitions. Easy to lose track of my files and folders when I have drives C through H, with most of them being simply transplanted from my previous PC.

I was clearing out some hard drive space and noticed I had a Star Citizen folder, dated 6 November 2013.