Keyrock

The way it's looking, I probably won't be finishing my rig until next year. Kinda sucks because I have almost everything except the CPU and GPU, but it is what it is. I wouldn't have had much time to build and use it anyway, since I plan to be home 1 day before driving to my folks for X-Mas then another 1 day when I get back around New Year's before going back on the road. With any luck, this madness dies down by late January/early February which would likely be my next time home.

Traditional Thanksgiving meal Man who never eat pork bun is never a whole man - Ancient Chinese Proverb

No pitchfork here. I have no ill will toward any legitimate consumer that gets a card; some jealousy, yes, but no ill will. The scalpers, on the other hand, those mother****ers will burn in hell for eternity if there's any justice in this world. I plan to put myself on the auto-notify list for a EVGA 3080 FTW3 Ultra Hydro Copper once the auto-notify button becomes available (i.e. those cards go from announced to physically available).

Switched up my team's jobs: I made Kasuga a host, kind of an all around job, can do a bit of everything except healing. Foreman for Adachi. Naturally, I gave him the Zubaz looking variant of the job outfit, because why wouldn't I? This job has some super powerful charge up attacks, which should be good for boss and mini-boss enemies. Also, it's the only job I've seen that can clear barricades in dungeons, opening up extra paths. I made Saeko a Matriarch. Seems like a DPS caster class that applies a lot of DOTs like bleed. Plus, she wields a naginata, which is one of my favorite weapons, so I had to use this job. In my head-canon she's an Onna-bugeisha. I'm having trouble finding a better weapon for her, hence her low attack stat, since she's using the base naginata. This leads me to believe (read: hope) that special naginatas are going to be awesome. Only 3 members in my team right now since Nanba left (temporarily?) for story reasons. I'm sorely lacking in healing right now and will have to rely on items for that until I get a 4th member that I can turn into a healer. Sumire crafting gear for me. There's a management mini-game. Because this is Ryu Ga Gotoku that made this game, this mini-game has more depth than some entire games. You can buy and sell properties, hire, fire, promote, and train employees, give out bonuses, attend shareholder meetings, buy advertising time, I could go on and on. It's bonkers how much effort they put into this mini-game that's mostly optional. That's Ryu Ga Gotoku, they don't half-ass anything.

On this day of giving thanks, I am thankful for Ryu Ga Gotoku for consistently putting a smile on my face. Nobody does feel good moments quite like them.

How soon do you need this PC? I ask because you can actually buy a 3700X right now, a 5600X not so much. For gaming, the 5600X will be the better chip 9 out of 10 times. However, as someone who is trying to buy a Ryzen 5000 processor himself, I know how hard these chips are to get. Hopefully it's easier in your region.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Even if you don't celebrate it, go feast tonight. Any excuse is a good excuse to feast.

That's always going yo be an issue in any FPS RPG. How do you handle stats and skills vs shooter mechanics? Borderlands handled it by having skill upgrades be nearly meaningless (e.g. +0.5% damage).

I only got to use my new Sony X900H for a short bit. It was a happy coincidence that I got it at all. It just happened that I stopped for the night about 8 miles from where I live. No point in sleeping in the truck 8 miles from home. It also happened that early Black Friday sales were on already. Anyway, I got the TV home, set it up, then made sure everything worked alright. Then, just for ****s and giggles, I hooked my lappy to it via HDMI and fired up Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After changing in-game resolution to 4K the game looked spectacular. It ran like ass, mind you. The GTX 1080 mobile in the lappy is great at 1080p and can handle 1440p in well optimized games, but 4K is just too much. It's a testament to how well optimized Yakuza: Like a Dragon is that it ran anything approaching remotely playable at 4K. After that it was sleepy time then back on the road next morning.

A little of column A and a little of column B (plus column C). Manufacturing lost some time because of COVID shutdowns, this was exacerbated by international shipping slowdowns or closures. At the same time, demand has been at Black Friday levels since April with zero let up because so many people are now working from/stuck at home, again, because of COVID. On top of all that, you have scalpers using bots to immediately buy up all the stock as soon as it becomes available. There are plenty of 3080s available for ludicrous prices on ebay right now. So, in short, COVID ruined everything then scalpers made it worse.

On the Chinese calendar 2020 is the year of the paper launch.

The 3090 is the only current gen video card, Nvidia or AMD, I EVER see in stock anywhere for any length of time longer than a microsecond. As desperate as people are for computer components, I guess there aren't that many people desperate enough to pay that outrageous a price.

I got my Sony Bravia X900H 55" today. Scooped it up from Best Buy for $892. Open box, but it looks brand new, not a scratch on it. Edit: Everything is functioning perfectly. There's always a bit of nervousness when getting an open box item, but this bad boy looks and functions like it's brand spanking new and had been factory sealed. The picture quality is tremendous. Now I just need to finish building the rig that will play games on this TV. If only I could actually buy those last few components.

Sierra was infamous for pulling supreme **** moves in their games, and I say that as a huge fan of the company. Sierra was my childhood. Maybe unwinnable states and ludicrous moon logic were a way of artificially inflating game length? (As well as the hint line thing) These days, developers inflate game length through pointless collect-a-thons and generic copy/paste quests. *glares in Ubisoft's direction*

That sounds like about a 5 or 6 on the Moon Logic Scale. The ultimate will always be the infamous cat hair mustache from GK3 IMHO, that puzzle is snow level deep moon logic. As an aside, not so much moon logic, but my beloved Sierra On-Line pulled one of the worst **** moves in one of the KQ games (I forget which one). There is a bridge in the game you cross multiple times. After a certain number of crossings (5 or 6 IIRC) the bridge collapses behind you, potentially leaving the game in a state where it's impossible to proceed and you may have to reload and redo as much as a couple of hours of game. There is absolutely no hint whatsoever that the bridge may collapse.

Today Khronos released version 1.2.162 of the Vulkan specification. What's notable about this point release is that ray tracing has been promoted from beta status to stable status. So, the fabled Vulkan ray tracing is now here and ready for mass consumption... once developers implement it in their games.

We can't even tank properly.

Now that I think about it, it's interesting that Dragon Quest is name dropped in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. And not just once in passing, it's been specifically mentioned multiple times, and always in a positive light. Were this a Squeenix game, I wouldn't give it a second thought, but Yakuza is a SEGA IP. Why name drop a game from a different company? If they wanted Kasuga to be inspired by a great jRPG then why not Phantasy Star? Are SEGA and Squeenix planning to work together on some manner of Yakuza x Dragon Quest crossover? If so, yes, please and thank you very much.

Fuddruckers is my top burger chain. It's probably a good thing tharlt the closest one to where I live is some 70 miles away, otherwise I'd be fatter than I already am.

In chapter 5 of Yakuza: Like a Dragon I was introduced to the job system. If you have played Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest (in fact, Kasuga is inspired by Dragon Quest in the story) then you know the job system already. Not every job is available to every character, but most are available to multiple characters (provided they meet level and stat requirements), save each character's unique job. Kasuga, as the main protagonist, is well balanced and suited for pretty much any type of job. I currently have him as a Breaker, which is mostly a DPS job. Adachi, an ex-cop, seems well suited to be a tank. I currently have him as an enforcer which is, well, a tank. Both Nanba, a homeless guy, and Saeko, a hostess club's mama, seem suited to be casters. I have them as a musician and a hostess respectively. Both seem to be support/control type jobs, though I am still figuring them out as I just switched to them.

I played the bejesus out of those old city builders back in the day. Zeus was my jam.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-allows-SAM-on-nvidia-gpus So, now that the cat is out of the bag that you can do SAM on any vendor's hardware, provided it meets certain criteria, AMD is "helping" Intel and Nvidia to get it working on a wider range of hardware. This is obviously PR so that AMD come out of this looking like the good guys. Announce the feature and imply that you need all AMD hardware to use it (technically true right now) to get people to buy both your CPU and GPU (never mind that you can't actually buy either right now ), then when Nvidia announce they will eventually implement the same feature, good guy AMD "helps out" so that everyone can benefit. Lisa Su, you sly fox.

Is Secret Files a point & click or a hidden object series? (I realize there is quite a bit of similarity between the two genres)