Tag: games

Advent Day 22 and we have a Crested Razor

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December 22, 2024

10:08 pm

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Hello everyone,

What’s behind the door today ?

Picture. We're looking at the advent collection again, which is up to 21 models arranged on the snow scene, plus the dwagon on the left this time. The new one is on top of two dice, the big d20 at 20 and a d6 with the 2 lit up. The model is a spaceship, with a blocky centre, guns either side at the front and two engines, one each side high up in the middle.

It’s another entry from the Mandalorian today, with the Razor Crest on top of the dice there. Again, it’s a series I’ve never seen, I’ve just seen the memes and some of the stories around the series. I might get Disney+ at some point to catch up on things like this and Andor but … I’m not actually watching much series telly at the moment.

Not sure why with that, it’s just probably not in my pattern these days. I do have that touch of Autism / ADHDness in me, which manifests itself in various ways. I like listening to the music a lot, which is rather incompatible with watching stuff on the telly. Some days, especially lately, the telly has stayed off so it’s not been another source of input that contributes to the burn out. The desktop monitor is where I watch stuff like the World Endurance Championship racing, IMSA racing and Formula 1, although I’m a one screen person so that’s exclusive of any gaming I’m thinking of doing … it’s also where a favoured stream will get watched.

Talking of gaming … there’s a curious feeling of thinking I’m being driven towards playing certain games in particular due to time limited events in the game. There are a couple of those at the moment :

Euro Truck Sim 2 is running an event for the latest Greece expansion, with a World of Trucks (you can see the link to my trucker on the links list). The event runs until 2nd Feb but I’ve actually crashed through it yesterday and today.

Picture. We're looking towards the sun, in the clouds above our truck. In the background, a domed building with two very thin pointed towers.

How was Greece ? Honestly, not great. The expansion has carried through the character of it being a very pretty place with its own distinct architecture. But … I think it’s been rushed through and the NPC driver AI can’t handle things like the Greece specific toll booths. Event’s complete now though, so I’ll go back to my newer* character and not see the Greek areas for quite some time probably.

*I reset my character down to zero when I started the game again, without any of the extra map packs. There are a series of achievements that are far quicker and easier to get if you have less of a map, like the one to explore 60% of the map and there’s another for exploring 100% of the map.

There’s another event going at the moment, to deliver Xmas packages from the Winter Wonderland area I mentioned previously. I’ll complete that in the next session in the game I do. I only need to do 7 more runs to complete the number I need to do.

One for considerably more grinding is in Elite Dangerous … I haven’t been in this one nearly as much as I used to be. Once I completed the latest exploration mission, I wasn’t seeing much else I was interested in with the game. However, with the incoming addition of colonisation to the game, that definitely has my attention. I’ll definitely have to find a star system I can turn into a Dwagon Roost.

That’s one for later though, the near term grind in Elite is going to be for better hyperdrives. I missed seeing info about a Community Goal where you could get hold of the latest best for free, so I’ll need to do some collecting there.

But I was feeling trucks far more than space this weekend, so trucks it was.

Thinking about it, there will be timed seasonal events going in World of Warcraft at the moment … I’ll have to go back to that game at some point. I went away from it when Star Wars Outlaws came out and lost myself in the world of Kay Vess and Nix. I’m probably about to rebuy Outlaws and lose myself in its world again.

Or Rogue Trader, a computer roleplaying game set in the far future of Warhammer 40,000. That has a soundtrack too … (I haven’t acquired that yet because I seem to bounce off that kind of game lately)

Ahhh, time to peek at the sales again and hover over adding Rogue Trader and Outlaws to the cart. I have the start of a Cunning Plan for the arrangements of things over the next week, which I think will work. But I think I need to hide away again from the why of those arrangements (it’s not for here) so …

Signing off again for tonight ! See you all tomorrow. Have a lovely rest of your day.

Advent day 19 and it’s crowded in the hangar bay

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December 19, 2024

10:15 pm

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Hello everyone,

Quick one again – internet feels better but I’ve had the old warning sign from my hand which means I probably shouldn’t type much … What’s behind the door today ?

Picture. We're looking at our advent scene again, with 18 models and dwagon scattered on the snow scene. On top of a red d6 on top of the big green d20 is a small fighter ship model. It has a central pilot pod, with a grey and green wing on each side.

Oops. Learning again not to press ctrl+v instead of ctrl+c when copying out the alt-text. (Random aside time!) It’s been a pretty useful skill to learn that, making the alt-text. The intention is to make the site more inclusive to people who can’t make out the detail in the pictures. Alt-text is descriptive words that you add, which gets picked up by screen reader software that’ll read out the text on the page. You’ll see it if you hover over the picture.

Why has it been more useful ?

Often, you’re not supposed to or aren’t allowed to take pictures of things. I mentioned spyware on mobiles last time, it extends to the phone providers insisting that you really want to upload all of your pictures to their servers. Ok, so what if you point the camera at something and capture something sensitive ? Oops. It’s now on Google’s or Apple’s servers too. The trick is to not point the camera at the sensitive things. But … when you’re the one person sent to look at something and you need to fully report back what you’ve seen to the others who aren’t able to go ? That’s the other way alt-text comes in really handy.

It lets you paint that picture of what you’re seeing in a concise descriptive language to pass on to those who can’t see what you’re seeing. But … it also trains you in observation to have you pick up the detail that you might have otherwise passed over with your eyes.

Anyway, it does mean that I need to pop the alt-text here in two places to make it work.

It’s a really valuable habit to pick up, because it really does help people out although I have been getting a bit lazy with the advent scene alt-text lately.

Other news before I disappear today …

Game screenshot. Truck Simulator. Our green truck is parked up off the side of a snow covered road curling off to the left. It has a trailer with pictures of letters on it. In the distance are tree covered hills, there are snow covered buildings of a village at the base of the hills.

Truck Game is doing a winter event at the moment, where you do short trips to and from the Winter Wonderland zone, added in for the season. It’s a good little variation in to the game, including having driving on snow effects.

And I think I need to rest that hand and disappear into book again. After enjoying A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher, I’m on a John Scalzi book again now. It’s The Collapsing Empire and it’s got a promising introduction to its space opera universe told in Mr Scalzi’s easy to read and very enjoyable style.

Later everyone, have a great rest of evening.

Advent Day 18 and U need better internet

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December 18, 2024

10:57 pm

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Hello everyone,

Short one again today kinda out of necessity because my internet is giving some problems ! Sometimes it seems like my internet can’t handle cold weather and … yep it’s on the RCS Partial Service and SYNC Timing Synchronisation failure warnings again, which means I’m running both laptop and desktop off the mobile phone hotspot and there’s a stream running on the laptop.

Before I ramble too much, what’s behind the door today ?

Picture. We're looking at our advent scene again and the collection of models has been joined by a small spacecraft on top of the big d20. The spacecraft is white, with yellow and blue trim. The main part is aft, with two long wings going directly forwards making a U shape. 2 pairs of engines are at the back.

There we are, it’s a U Wing transport spacecraft from the excellent Rogue One movie. It could actually be the best Star Wars movie for me. It just made sense from start to finish, it avoided a lot of the mysticism of the Force which is literally handwavium. You could identify with all of the characters and they were acted so completely brilliantly.

Gonna have to watch it again soon. If you haven’t seen it for any reason, I’d thoroughly recommend finding a way to see it. It transcends itself past the source material.

Situation I mentioned yesterday – I don’t have any updates yet, which I’m taking as a good or at least neutral sign. I’m still feeling very broken mentally and physically at the moment but my concern is without rather than within. I’ll be ok although I do need rest, which is why that concern is pointing outwards rather than inwards.

Other stuff …

I’ll upgrade the mobile phone over the break. I can’t trust it any more, I’ll occasionally open it to find that some of the settings have gone weird. Like a Google authentication text disabling the notifications on incoming text messages, so I didn’t see some important info until I looked in the text messages area (by incidental look). It has some other quirks as well that may be interfering with normal operation.

It’s a Pixel 4 from 5 years ago, it’s done pretty well and it was a great move to go to it from a Samsung Galaxy 7 which was absolutely riddled with malware and intrusionware from Samsung. I believe they toned that down after the Galaxy S7 but I’ve got no reason to go outside Pixel, so I’ll replace the Pixel 4 with a Pixel 9.

Like, it’s doing well at the moment by hotspotting for both laptop and desktop and providing an active local area network link between the two. But I’m not going to push it too much by pulling cruise pictures over from the laptop today.

I’ll hold off for now on the desktop PC upgrade. Part to ease out the spending a little bit, part so I can see what happens with the graphics card market next month. I may well go for the option of doing a core (Processor, memory, case, mainboard) upgrade to go to Windows 11, while keeping the current 3060Ti graphics card. It’s still pretty good for power moving the pixels around the screen.

About that …

Picture. We're looking at a mostly green background poster thing showing how much I've been playing games this year. The title is "Sleepydwagonman's steam replay 2024". There is a big 34 games played above panels showing 393 achievements, 795 sessions and 18 new games. 5 panels below show my most played games.

I think that shows that when I start gaming, it’ll be long sessions. Someone on a discord is showing 1600 sessions, so they must be swapping between games a lot. I suppose each Skyrim session shows up as well and those can be only about a minute if I’m messing about with my set of mods.

I left out what the games were in the alt-text, so here we go for them by play time :

80% Idle Champions – this is an idle game where you set it up and let it run in the background. It kinda has story links in it but the main aim is to complete the adventures and make all the numbers go up, with your adventurers steadily getting stronger and stronger. Not quite sure why I still play it to be honest, maybe a habit. This one has accounted for 194 of those 393 achievements.

11% in Little Big Workshop – I love this cute easy to play factory building game and can easily forget about the world for many hours by opening it in the evening and then realising that the sun is coming up. It’s also 80% off until the next daily reset, which I think is going to be the start of a Steam sale anyway … so it’ll probably go off discount straight back on discount.

Motorsport Manager comes in at 4% of time played – this is a racing team simulator game, where you set the strategy and watch your drivers attempt to go around the track faster than everyone else. I’m currently in another megacampaign which has reached the late 2050s. This game caught me when it came out because it did everything so, so right … and gave believable races. Whereas I just bounced off the recent F1 Manager series, maybe they’ll get those right by the end of that contract.

Euro Truck Simulator has had a late revival with about 1% – I came back into this one in October. It’s another easy to play game where I’ll pick a route to go down and just attempt to chill while going from place to place. It has the progression factor that I look for, in that as I get money in the game, I can add more trucks to the company empire. I think I’m back to 15 now since restarting.

Last up for Steam is Aliens Dark Descent at 1% again – this is a real time strategy type game, set on a planet in the Alien universe. Big scary monsters are out to turn everyone into more big scary monsters but you’ve also got to contend with cultists and corporates. It’s a great game for the mechanics it introduced and the tension it builds. It does have bugs … but it’s another one that I enjoyed finishing. Apparently in just under 60 hours.

And that’s it for Steam – honourable mentions go to American Truck Simulator, the 2 Deus Ex games (Human Revolution and Mankind Divided), Cobalt Core was a fun find, Rover Mechanic Simulator is a nice little take stuff apart, fix stuff game. Dredge is in there with a bit of time spent on the latest DLC expansion and I’ll keep dipping into and out of the old Battletech game.

There’s more about the Steam Stuff at the link.

Outside of Steam, I did go back into World of Warcraft for a while … although I think I may have broken that addiction again and should probably either go back in again or cancel the subscription.

Then there’s also Elite Dangerous, which I did enjoy dipping back into again earlier this month. Warcraft and Elite aren’t launched via Steam for me, so the hours don’t add up there.

And the highlight for me of this year was Star Wars Outlaws. It has been criticised for bugs, which I only saw a couple of. It was a delight being immersed in the Star Wars universe doing shenanigans with the main character and companion. It was a weird feeling not really wanting to run it through to the finish of the story because I wanted to keep playing … but I was on a time limit due to not wanting to pay the asking price, with me playing it on the monthly subscription.

And that’s it for me for today ! Have a lovely evening everyone. Be well, hope you and yours are doing ok.

Advent day 7 and it’s a … box ?

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December 7, 2024

9:07 pm

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Hello everyone, what’s behind day 7’s door ?

Picture. Our advent scene now has the addition of a cylindrical object with green and red dots. It's sitting on top of a green 20 sided dice.

Apparently it’s a minikit from the Lego Star Wars games, something you break to get game currency.

Because today’s model has come from a game, I thought I’d talk about games I’ve been playing recently today. First up …

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Sim 2. We're looking at a sunset scene, where our truck in the lower left is going past an embankment to the right. On the embankment, glowing purple bushes ...

That’s taken from Euro Truck Simulator 2. I’ve been enjoying being back in the Truck Games. Something about the set up of taking a delivery mission from a huge choice (I usually pick the one paying the most £/mile) and then going from place to place appeals to me. Opening a bit more of the map and getting money to expand the truck collection gives me a bit of progress from each session.

Don’t know what’s happening with the bushes there, I think a recent mod has broken some textures or a mod needs to catch up. I think it’s kinda amusing when that happens, there’s no impact on gameplay and I’ve been watching the expansion of our new alien overlord purple glowing bushes.

Game screenshot. Cobalt Core. We're looking at two spaceships in the middle, facing each other. Our crew is shown in three portraits to the left, with the enemy portrait top right. A row of different playing cards is below and there is assorted other buttons.

That’s from Cobalt Core, which I first saw DistractedElf playing a little while ago. It’s a Roguelike game, structured around a timeloop mechanic where it takes about an hour for each run. It’s a good one to dip in and out of. Each battle is done with cards, this particular ship uses the Jupiter’s Moons to shoot the enemy. Each ship takes turns shooting the other and hopefully we can demolish the enemy before they demolish us.

I’ve been enjoying this one, it’s a fun little diversion to dip into and out of. Talking of spaceships …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at an orange rocky planetary surface, with the rust coloured buildings of a base scattered in front of us. In front and low on screen is our ship, it's blue at the back with engines on outriggers to left and right. There is a gold stripe in the middle and the front is white.

I had another little dip into Elite Dangerous again, with fleet flagship Tiamat’s Chariot coming out of the hangar for a new paint job and some trading. I haven’t been interested in the recent Thargoid arc at all but they’re showing info at the moment about a planet colonisation expansion coming soon and … that’s got my attention.

It was a good little session going from station to station taking goods from place to place.

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking down at a factory separated into various rooms, with little people with bobble hats at work stations. On the right, a list of items being assembled. In the centre, a jolly fellow with a santa hat is telling us we did a really good job getting things together for Xmas.

I may have slid into doing another Little Big Workshop run again. I really love this game, it’s an easy to play chilled out factory builder where you buy workstations for your adorable idiot little minions to use to put together various items that you sell for profit. (They have issues with sticking to tasks, hence affectionately calling them “idiot”).

I’ve been playing and enjoying Little Big Workshop for a huge number of hours (1538!) because it’s just so easy to play and it’s also very addictive. I set myself up for challenge runs now to see how quickly I can get them to finish all of the objectives.

Game screenshot. Motorsport Manager. We're looking at the livery design screen and a purple, black and pink sports car.

Of course there’s been a bit of Motorsport Manager in there. This one is another that I can pretty watch play and occasionally intervene. A dinner time game ! I’m in the midst of another very long campaign here. I’ve won the championships with the endurance car, the GT car and the single seater cars and am now in a second single seater racing team, building that one up so it beats the rest of the competition again.

I think I might have a pattern there … I’ll attach to games that I get really, really good at and then not play anything else. I guess there’s a bit of enjoying the games with that too, is that what really counts there ? Variation is good though.

Last one of this set … I rebought Deus Ex Human Revolution last month. This is probably the number 1 first person shooter story style game for me. It doesn’t do everything another game would do … but what it does, it does extremely well with super tight gameplay. And the story is pretty decent too.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Human Revolution. We're looking out over an industrial city scape at night towards a parking area with wire fencing. There are various concrete blocks to hide behind and a mission marker to the left.

I may have completed all of its achievements in just one single run. I’ll be back for Deus Ex Mankind Divided (the sequel) at some point, I like to space them out to in part reflect there being 2 years game timeline between the two games.

They’re a cracking pair of near future games, where augmentation technology is becoming a big part of life. Definitely worth a look and the games are practically given away at sales time. Like the Mass Effect set !

I dropped a screenshot of Mass Effect Legendary edition the other day so I’ll hold off on doing that again now. These are games from a good few hundred years ahead, first person shooter style games driven by story. Perhaps a controversial one saying that I prefer the Deus Ex games ?

I think that’s it for me for tonight. Oh ! We survived the storms ok ! My bin stayed up too (or was propped up again by CK on his way to/from shops, cheers CK).

Have a lovely evening everyone.

Day 3 ! One for the pew pew

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December 3, 2024

9:47 pm

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Hello everyone, what’s behind door number 3 ?

Picture. We're looking at the snow scene, with red dwagon to the left, Leia figure rear right and the XWing is behind a starfighter with two black hexagonal wings either side of a little pod in the centre.

I think I have a little behind the scenes stuff to catch up on here :-D. I’m seeing a “Generate with AI” button on the picture uploads, which I will never use and kinda object to the WordPress mod people adding there ! Oh dear, just started and we’re massively tangenting already. Only one thing to do there … grab that tangent and dive right on in !

Tangent 1 – AI generated pictures … I won’t call them art because I don’t consider it art in the same way as someone putting their soul into what they make is art. But I have seen some wonderful pictures where people take a number of objects and a theme and weave them together into something that looks absolutely stunning. That’s a bit different from people just putting “a fierce dragon with a sword in a fantasy setting” into a picture generator and getting something out that looks almost identical to something Askren (aka Exploding Dice) has taken days to make and was paid to create.

(Askren is a good egg, check him out, that’s the Twixxer link above which probably won’t last that much longer).

Tangent 2 ! Social media. I’ve been struggling to keep up with these lately. I’ll monitor Instagram closely because I have that tightly curated down to only show me a small number of selected individuals who post content on there that makes me happy. I’ve been enjoying the general vibe on Bluesky, the artist and author community there is fun to keep up with. Twixxer is dying a death due to the policies being introduced to it and … Farcebook is algorithm driven and doesn’t let you keep up with people without spam being introduced.

The main thing there is … social media can be very overwhelming. It can be a bit too much trying to keep up with it all. It’s ok if you need to withdraw from it and go a bit lower profile on it. Look after yourselves. If it’s getting too much, consider dropping the follows of people who don’t bring you joy or otherwise reduce how much you feel obliged to keep up with it all.

Picture. Star Trek Meme. We're looking at two men in overalls, red at the top, black lower down with black shoulder areas. The bald one on the left says "I've never written a trigonometry paper", then "But I cosigned a few". The black haired fellow on the right is now holding his head in his hand.

I’m mostly going to be doing fairly random posts throughout advent (including tangents when they hit) but also maybe getting led by the day’s model … It’s a TIE Fighter today, which is taking me back (way back) to the first space fighter game that had me addicted on PC. It’s TIE Fighter from the days of the 486 based machine. Yep. Last century. TIE Fighter was a really, really good game in its time. Excellent graphics and a tight, responsive flight model. There was a decent story running through as well, TIEing all of the missions together.

Game screenshot. Tie Fighter. We're looking out of an octagonal window into space, from a small fighter ship. The lower part of obscured by a target display showing a boxy shuttle. Top left and top right are a couple of circles with dots showing what is around us.

I went to the X Wing game a little later, I actually enjoyed TIE Fighter more. The missions were difficult but I managed to complete them all. Whereas some of the missions in XWing got me stuck and I couldn’t get past them.

Fast forward a whole heap of years and we get to …

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. Our character is in the foreground wearing blue jacket and faded brown trousers. In the background, a boxy grey white spaceship pointing left with engines to the right. It's a day scene with hazy clouds in the sky.

That’s from Star Wars Outlaws and has our player character, Kay Vess, looking at a spaceship called the Trailblazer. I really enjoyed this game. I’d effectively rented it from the publisher because … it’s really expensive. I can easily afford the asking price to buy it (£95 for the version with a season pass for expansions), I just don’t want to pay that much for a game. I did massively enjoy it though and will happily play it again when the discounts are low enough. 25% (current Steam sale) is a decent start at a discount but …. I got other games to play first before going back to Outlaws.

It was a lot of fun though and I did love feeling immersed in the world that the developers created for us. They gave us something special here. That’s my honest opinion there, lots of other opinions are out there about this one. If you’re deciding whether to play it, please go by the opinions of people who have actually played it, not the ones who see : female protagonist, Star Wars not what they would have done and all of the other weird prejudices people get.

I think I might be getting a bit too excited there and it’s telling in how my shoulder is behaving :-D. (It’s a little sore and is making my right hand start to be numb again).

I better leave it there, maybe another epic screenshot ?

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're on a desert planet, looking at sandy blocky buildings in the background with mountains behind there. In the foreground, our Kay Vess and lined up behind her are 2 speeder cars and 3 speeder bikes.

That’s from the Mos Eisley space port, first seen in the original movie. I loved seeing the little Easter Eggs that they seeded through the game, including this line up of the various speeders from the various movies.

Also oh look, just under a day to go on the Steam sale. I have the following in the cart and should really buy :

Mass Effect Legendary edition – I enjoyed going back to Deus Ex Human Revolution again and playing this fresh. So the Mass Effect games at 92% off (£3.99) have the attention.

Slipways and soundtrack – a somewhat speculative one at 50% off (£8.08). This one is a space strategy game.

Tank Mechanic Simulator – ok, a weird one but I did enjoy Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. This one is 76% off for £3.71.

Tavern Master’s Pirate Cove DLC – no discount, this one is £4.29 and I did enjoy building a legendary tavern in the original game which looks like its lost its discount early.

Ok, that’s it for me for tonight, enjoy the rest of your evening, see you tomorrow. I’m going to be concentrating on enjoying the rest of Billietrixx’s Twitch (with link) stream, Tessachka (linky) is on the laptop and there’s a Mike Oldfield album playing in the background.

Nite all 🙂

You can pet the “dog”

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August 29, 2024

10:46 pm

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musing

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again … Time for a little check from last time :-D. Ah ha ! The Olympics had just started up. It was a good games again too, I quite enjoyed watching what I was seeing there. I haven’t posted in a little while because to be honest, the burn out was hitting again. Thumbnail first ?

Picture. We're looking at a blue poster with the title "I'm going to Creator North". It has the date September 14and the location Kommune, Sheffield. In the centre, is a small green dwagon holding a red heart shape in front of him.

There we go, that’ll do.

Really looking forward to that event, it’s coming up in a few weeks and it’ll involve a weekend trip. It’s the second time it’s been run after a fun first event last year. Here’s the link to what I wrote after last time. This year’s event is going to be a bit bigger. I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be a chance to meet up again with friends from last year, friends from streams going back a long time and friends from new streams that I haven’t seen in person before.

It’ll hopefully grow even more, especially in the wake of the Insomnia Gaming Festival disappearing earlier this year. We’ll see. Fingers crossed. We do have MCM Comic Con as well and various other Comic Cons but it would be good to see the seed started by some very lovely people running the Creator events continue to grow.

I do sometimes wonder where I fit in with events like this one though. I do Create, although I do skip from thing to thing. The blogs have been a mostly continuous thing going back 19 years now over the two sites. There was a quick look at seeing what was needed to do Youtube videos (link to channel for those curious) but I didn’t continue that because it would have taken a lot of time to grow into something that would provide a return on the time. Plus it would have needed sacrifices including giving up listening to copyrighted music all the time (it’d be picked up on the mic and detected) and the stream watching. There was the sketching, although that stopped 4 years ago when I think that’s when I slammed into the burn out wall.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cute sleeping grey and white kitten on a white blanket. The captions are "I would be unstoppable" "If not for the tired sleepy"

I’m still in that burn out now, it doesn’t feel like it has eased at all. Maybe even deeper. I’m ok, hanging in there but it definitely feels like I’ll need to be taking care of myself a bit better. Maybe even doing more stuff out of the ordinary like the cruise last year. I think I really needed that removal from the normal for a while. That’s odd isn’t it … deal with tiredness by going off and doing something.

I don’t think I’ve ever been normal there in how I react to stuff. When I do take time off and do the restful thing of staying at home, I won’t exactly do very much (apart from gaming and listening to stuff). And I’ll be thinking throughout that I should be getting out and about and having that hit my mental state in a negative way. And my mental state is, to be honest, not that great at the moment.

There’s a lot of things to that, a lot of things pulling that mental state downwards. And I wouldn’t want to talk about too many of those here. (Some are work, some are definitely behind the personal stuff wall). Some of it is down to the state of my outsides, where I’ll slowly heal up (my arms are actually mostly ok now) and then over a single event, that healing will go dramatically backwards again. That’s part stress, a little bit of what I might have eaten or just attacking stuff when my guard’s down when I’m attempting to sleep.

And, being honest again, I’m not seeing the way out of the burn out at the moment.

But … I’m getting a bit of time off into the books after the Creator North event. I do need to get a trip booked in for some of that time and a return to Legoland is definitely looking tempting. I would like to find some chances to get myself somewhere to see the stars. That could have happened last weekend but my arms had just stabilised again after doing even more damage to them.

(if you’re reading this and thinking that there’s self harm going on, that’s kinda true. But it’s because my skin went super delicate after all the issues over the last decade. But it’s not self harm that would see me going into an ambulance, it’s more like if I scratch too much, I do a lot of damage. My mental health isn’t great but it’s not down at That Place).

Just a note on that above – it’s ok to not be ok, just please give yourself a chance to climb out if you’re in that pit. And that can be just being around communities like the discords. It might not be sharing your difficulties but even just popping up every once in a while and saying hi is great for the soul. And when you can’t see your own worth, there will be a bunch of people who will be really happy to see that you’ve popped up and that you’re still around. And sometimes, putting up a paw and saying hi is all we have the energy to do. It definitely makes me smile when I put a hello emote into a stream chat and a “SLEEPY” or “DWAGON” comes back from the person streaming.

“Can we pet the dog?”

I’ve been in the games again, with me enjoying running a few more factories in Little Big Workshop to conclusion. It’s a fun, cute little honest factory building game and I just keep going back to it. There’s a progression to it and I like to see the cute little idiot (the game can have some issues with priorities) gnomes go about building stuff.

Motorsport Manager has finished another segment of the latest megacampaign, so I’ve switched teams again after winning again. It’s a game where you can just keep on going with it, I’m in the year 2052 now. Inflation isn’t a thing in the game, outside of people wanting more money as they get better. Old drivers retire and get replaced by newly generated 18-20 year old drivers. It works well for a megacampaign where as you go on, it’s still all new.

Picture. We're looking at a heap of snacks arranged on a light blue bed sheet in front of a box of Lego. The Lego box has the word Jaws on it and has a picture of a black and yellow trawler boat being chased by a shark. We also see the red dwagon plush to the left.

Dredge came out with a new DLC, with an Iron Rig, I enjoyed playing through that after it released. And I managed to get to Cardiff as well to grab the unofficial Lego tie in. Comes with free shark, does not include game. Gonna need bigger shelf. (And steadily making a dent in the snacks)

And the latest one is Star Wars Outlaws …

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're looking at a dark scene inside a cavern of orange rock. In the centre, a starfighter is being disassembled and we see other mechanical debris scattered around. Our character is bottom left, hiding behind a barrier.

This one is a sneaky game and I’ve really enjoyed dipping into it for the last couple of evenings after closing up the work laptop. It places you in the Star Wars universe as a smuggler scoundrel lady with an adorable companion. Instead of lightsabers and the Force, it sees you relying on stealth and guile and a reliable blaster at your side. It is very expensive (£75 for the equivalent of what I’m playing) but I’m actually kinda just renting it on the monthly subscription (£15) so I’m looking at crashing through the game so I can drop that sub again. I don’t think I’ll have a problem doing that :-D.

Oh and you have a companion too, a little adorable doglike critter who you can send off to do stuff like :

Distract – it’ll go off and dramatically play dead in front of guards, so you can sneak past them while they’re looking the other way.

Steal – little dude is an arch thief.

Hit switches – like turning power off for a camera

And probably more too. I dunno, it feels like whereas I bounced off Starfield pretty hard (just didn’t engage with that future humanity thing), I’m quite engaged with the early days of Star Wars Outlaws.

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're looking at scenes from a city street, with our character in white tunic and dark trousers leaning over to scratch the little blue critter on the head.

And you can pet the “dog”.

I think I need to disappear now (2240 and I want to get some reading in !). Look after yourselves, have a lovely weekend. One way I look out for my mental state is doing things for other people, although that kinda depends on other people to do the nice things for. Hope you find your way too. Time to open up Seventh Bride by T Kingfisher again after enjoying Michael Palin’s Pole to Pole.

🙂

A year in (Steam) games

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December 18, 2023

10:15 pm

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games

Hello everyone,

There’s been a couple of year recap things come out lately, the one from today is from the Steam games store showing what I’ve been up to this year. I figured, hey, let’s share this one.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a non plussed looking black dog with a grey muzzle looking to the right. The dog is wearing a flat cap. The captions are "When I was a pup" and "I had one toy and it was a stick"

Games have come a fair way since the early days. The days (hushed voice) of 8 bit microcomputers. I started my gaming on a BBC Micro. Yep, last century, I am old. Oh ! I even did a meme for that a little while ago.

Picture. Cartoon meme. There are 4 panels with a pink figure on a bed talking to a blue figure with a lab coat and glasses. The captions go "Doc, I feel like I'm getting old" "Hmmm, tell me, did you play Elite when it first came out?" "Yeah, I played it as a kid". Last panel, the Doc writes "Patient is basically dead"

Yep. That fits. Elite Dangerous doesn’t appear in the list because I play it through the Frontier launcher but it would have a position high up here as well. I had a peek at a port of Frontier Elite 2 from 1993 too, might go back to that. What’s Steam say about me ? Here we are :

Picture. We're looking at a panel with my gaming statistics for 2023. It says 33 games played, 306 achievements, 787 sessions, 16 new games. My most played games are shown with their store pictures and they are Idle Champions, Little Big Workshop, Motorsport Manager, One Military Camp and Trans Road USA.

There’s a bit more detail on the Steam page itself. The stats are heavily dominated by Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, which is an idler game that you just set up and it runs itself. So that’ll be running on the machine for many hours at a stretch and it’ll be running in the background of other games too. (For some of the stats, the game has to be running). A good few of those sessions will be from troubleshooting mods for games like Skyrim, where the game is launched, has a crash, the mods are tweaked and we try again. The others in that panel are :

Little Big Workshop – it’s a cute factory game where your little gnomeployees will set about building toys with the workshop tools you provide for them. It’s a lovely little game and I’d thoroughly recommend it. It’s a game I keep going back to.

Motorsport Manager – should really have had its time by now with the release of the frankly not good enough F1 Manager games but I still keep going back to this one. It’s a low interaction game, so I can do a race with the tactics and stuff while I’m munching my dinner.

One Military Camp – this one came out this year and it’s a fun little camp building thing, where you manage the one military camp to survive an invasion. It’s your job to set up the army to push back the evil dictator guy.

Trans Road USA – hmm, an ok game, probably not one I’d recommend. It has nice mechanics for setting up the trucking company but the campaign mode gets very silly. Still, I got my value out of it and it kept me amused for a long time.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a dark area of space, lit by scattered stars. Our ship is lower left in the foreground. It's facing away, pointing upwards. We can see engines on outriggers to the left and right, the hull is lit by lines of red. Top left is a small dark moon. Top right is a ball of a space station, with a ringed section behind.

Like the space trucking game. That one’s from Elite Dangerous, which I have connected to Steam but I just play it through the separate Frontier launcher.

My games seem to have gone more recent than the average, with 70% of them being released in the last 1 to 7 years. The average of that is 52%. Forgetting Idle Champs, the most played style is Management Games, i.e. games where I can mostly sit back and watch and occasionally intervene. 146 of the 306 achievements were from Idle Champions.

Highlights of the year were :

Dredge – a charming little game where you’re a ship captain of a little fishing boat. I’ve mentioned this one before. If you like the spooky vibes from the trailer, it’s definitely worth a look. I enjoyed it.

Skyrim – for the endless variety of mods you can add to it. Plus I like the vibe of being able to set out in a direction and find something new. I still need to finish it.

Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided – the pair of Adam Jensen games that leaves everyone who plays them pining for a sequel to finish off the trilogy. They’re set in the grim near future, where cyborg augmentations are being added to our bodies. They’re a good pair of shooter stealth story type games, maybe ageing now but good story games don’t really lose their appeal. I’ll mention another of these in a bit.

Battletech – oh there’s one. Harebrained Schemes (the devs) did a great job with this one and I keep going back to it.

Mars Horizon – was one I played to death and I’ll keep occasionally going back to it. It puts you in charge of a space agency. The sequel due in 2024 will hopefully be a great game.

Old classics – Stellaris and Knights of the Old Republic. I feel these games have aged badly. Kotor was an early game of its type, newer games have made a lot of improvements. Stellaris started great but it lost me along the way with too many patches and gameplay changes. Master of Magic had a good remake but I think it’s stuck too much in the past. I miss the old wizard avatars too.

Fun but I’ve finished with them – Tavern Master, nice little pub builder but I’ve seen all it has. Euro Truck Sim 2 and American Truck Sim, I did enjoy taking the loads to the varied places but … it was hurting my hands to play it. Airport CEO is one where I’ve seen all it has again.

Promising but could be much better – Farm Manager 2021, I got annoyed by the restrictions of a seemingly endless campaign. Pegasus Expedition, this story based strategy game has an interesting take on space Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate but the mechanics let it down. I might go back to it. Final Upgrade, a factory builder but … was finding it a bit tedious.

Mechanic games – Rover Mechanic Simulator is an occasional pleasure where you take Mars rovers apart and fix them. Offroad Mechanic Simulator is a successor to the car mechanic sim games.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. We're looking at the concrete outside a garage with the road in the distance. The foreground has a sleek purple open top car with lots of chrome trim. The background has a bright green little pick up truck.

What’s left ? Lots !

Games I bounced off but need to give more of a chance to : Solasta, a table top style role playing game. Just can’t get into these. Cyberpunk 2077, a future shooter role player. Mount and Blade II Bannerlord is another new one for me. Sky Haven is an airport manager builder game that I tried the other week but Brain said NOPE. Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries is like Battletech with the big war robots but this one puts you in the pilot seat. Dorf Romantik and Rogue Tower are both fun little additions.

Stuff I completely and totally bounced off : Ticket to Ride, would be a fun board game with friends, very meh solo. War for the Overworld, Game Dev Tycoon, Two Point Campus (on a free trial).

And that’s them all ! Highlight of the year is definitely Dredge.

Game screenshot. Dredge. We're looking towards a deserted looking island with pine trees and huts. In the foreground, a shaggy skinny looking orange furred dog which is looking our way. The options to the right are "Pet the Dog" and "Leave". We of course made the following caption happen "You reach out and gently pat the dog. Its eyes follow your hand, and it seems to understand you're not a threat."
YOU CAN PET THE DOG

Quest of the year, game of the year. (Haven’t bought Baldur’s Gate 3 yet)

Hope you enjoyed this little peek into my gaming life for 2023. Back to cruising next post probably 😀

Where would you be in a science fiction universe ?

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October 23, 2023

9:44 pm

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Hello everyone,

Yep. Odd thought, it got into my head last night when I was trying to get to sleep. I don’t think I did actually sleep last night, hopefully better today. I suspect it’s been showing in what I’ve been saying about certain groups at work. Like the one who’s head should be on a pike in front of the offices (there’s a few of those) and I was saying I wanted to burn some people’s houses down last week.

Still kinda feel like that. Maybe I need another break again, burn out can creep up on people without them realising and it leads to being intolerant where you should be more ready to retreat, reset and try again from a different angle.

Picture. We're looking at the face of a brown and white cat. It's looking directly at the camera, resting on a blanket. The caption is "I let my mind wander. It never came back"

Quite. Where did the last fortnight go ? Feels like it’s gone by in an absolute blur. A couple of books have been demolished since then too, with Illuminations by T.Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon, Hugo Winner) being a highlight. Maybe not as good as the two Clocktaur War books but those were for a more adult audience and could be a lot edgier, grittier and had a definite sexual tension running through both books.

Good stories too. T Kingfisher books are very inventive in how they keep the story unfolding before you and they surprise you too. Great books can tell their story in the perfect time. They’re not too short, not too padded or drawn out. They’re just right. And that’s how I’ve found the T Kingfisher books … and a little mention for Aliette de Bodard there too.

I didn’t think so much with Wool, the first book in the Silo trilogy. It felt padded and a bit too drawn out. The one I’m reading at the moment is book 6 in a series of 9 by James David Victor. They’re good … but they’re also so fast that I’m reading them 2 at a time.

Science fiction universe ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a space scene, with occasional stars dotting the background. In the bottom right foreground, we're looking at a red and white blocky spaceship flying away from us with two engines flaring purple exhaust. A ball like space station is in the distance, with white and black sections. Solar panels can be seen behind.
Dungeon Food Truck, departing

That’s the Dungeon Food Truck, callsign KN-00T after the lovely Knightenator (Twitch link). I don’t watch enough Knightenator, it can be a bit much sometimes for my brain, bit too much anarchy. Lovely lady though, well worth a watch and I couldn’t resist the meme this time with this particular ship. It’s a Type 9 Freighter Explorer, with the prime mission being to go out among the stars …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed on a reddish brown plain, with several sharp mountains behind, casting their shadows. To the upper right, we see the black, grey and white rings of the planet we are on. Above and behind, we see a small globe of a planet in eclipse shadow, with a set of rings surrounding it.

I was in pretty much full on Travel Mode (Honk, Scoop, Jump, Repeat sometimes scan the good systems) with a mission. Yep. Get to a far flung station …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship can be faintly seen lower centre, lost in shadow. On the left, the circular shape of a space station with the lit up rectangular docking entrance in the middle. On the right, a white moon pockmarked with small craters. Behind that, a faint blue planet with the line of a planetary ring.

I’ll come back to the mission later.

That question though, if you found yourself in a science fiction universe, what would you want it to be ? We can draw on any of the settings, either our universe or something different. Near future or far off ?

The Star Wars universe is an obvious setting to look at. There’s so much variety here and it’s absolutely full of life. This is a good choice as well, I could see myself being a Han Solo type, with a spaceship traveling between the planets being led by the next big score. Or getting by with simpler cargoes to pay the bills.

Elite Dangerous has a similar spread of life throughout its little populated bubble of stars. It doesn’t have the variety of Star Wars though, with just humans and badly handled Thargoids who won’t be buying you a drink in a bar.

Star Trek is the other huge one, with it close(ish) future of warp drives, impossible science and more great variety of alien life. Star Trek would be a great universe to live in, although it does seem a little limited for starfarers outside the Federation and other Empires. The ships seem a bit big for independent traders, compared to the little ships of Elite and Star Wars.

And then there’s Warhammer 40,000 … Oh my. In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, you’ll be dead before you hit the “May …” of the “May you live in Interesting Times” curse. It’s a bit too much of a stratified society for me, with very few people having any chance of an independent life.

It hasn’t really worked out that way for me (been held back by the health issues of the last 10 years and generalised inertia) but if I could be a ship captain visiting a different port with different cargo every run, yeah I’d quite like that. And the Elite and Star Wars universes both appeal to that with opportunities for the small traders. But you have to stay ahead of the criminal element.

Fun times.

Not so sure about the near future Earth universes. I think we’re exhausting what this planet has to offer, I’d rather be out in the stars seeing new things. I should book one of those cruise holidays though, so I can see a bit more of this planet.

(Back to reality) That’s one thing that has gone whoosh – a bit of a break out with my outsides with the usual thing of quick damage being slow to repair. But it’s getting there. Although I’ve had to add Lemon Sherbets to the suspicion list. Bad snacks. But I wouldn’t want to go away for that long without being able to use the healing gunk.

(Back to unreality) I do like playing in the near future universe of Deus Ex, although that might be more character than setting. Must go back to the Mankind Divided game soon. I don’t think I want to live in that world though, doesn’t seem that much future in it.

Big honourable mention to the Gareth L Powell universes too. He’s very inventive with his world building and can establish his worlds very quickly with the tight narrative. Another recent read was Descendant Machine, which is set in the Continuance series (2 so far hopefully more coming) where humanity has been banished from the Earth for being naughty with nukes. I’ve enjoyed both Descendant Machine and Stars And Bones. Without giving too much of the building away, humanity now lives on starship Arks, with smaller Vanguard scout ships investigating the space they go through. I’d see me being a Vanguard agent.

Yep. Put me in a spaceship and let me chart my own course and I’ll be happy. Journeying is better with a crew though.

Oh ! Here we are …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a space scene, our white and red spaceship is to the bottom left. We can just see part of a planet coloured white with thin dark bads. A couple of small interstellar clouds are to top left and between those, we see the lights of our fleet carrier emerging from a black cloud.

(That’s a little bit enhanced, the original was very poorly lit and Gimp has very effectively balanced it there)

That was journey’s end yesterday, with me meeting up with the fleet carrier for the first time in months.

Mission accomplished, carrier crew needed a consignment of Party Rings. (So good). Also needed to bring carrier fuel. But it was mostly about the Party Rings.

Time to post and enjoy more of a Tashnarr stream (Twitchy link). Have a good evening everyone, find snack, enjoy snack, be happy.

Technical Difficulties May Delay Cruise

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September 11, 2023

11:02 pm

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games

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a curious few weeks since I posted last time. (I do like that word, “curious”, it covers a lot of meanings.) I’m on leave for a week now, it’s been delayed a little bit by me doing Work Stuff but I’m in chill out mode at the moment.

Cartoon picture, credit to "Regan". We're looking at two dinosaurs sitting on a rock jutting out of a rising ocean, there is the top of a tree to the left. In the background, a ship with pairs of animals on board. The caption "Oh crap! Was that TODAY?"

Yep. Could have been on a cruise this week. The why not is because I’ve been dealing with another flare up with my outsides again. The pattern there seems to be about a week of slow healing followed by a day where it’ll suddenly reset back to the start of that again. I think it’s steadily improving but I’m not wanting to be too far away from the gunk I’m using to medicate it at the moment. Including an overnight away for work last week … It was threatening again on that.

How come it’s bad ? To be honest, not sure. I think I’m reacting to something I’ve been eating again but I can’t localise what it could be. Outside of maybe something garlic related. I know, weird thought. But I did get a reset this weekend after garlic butter infused bread with my dinner on Thursday and pizza garlic bread on Saturday. Need more data.

After living with this condition for over 10 years now, it’s something I have to keep a very close eye on. The psychologically damaging thought is “will it ever get better ?” And that thought does keep running through my mind. That’s partially answered by “It has got a lot better” because I can somewhat remember what it was like over 5 years ago when it was at its worst. I’m not going to go into too much details but one curiosity is that a large amount of my legs is smooth now, hairless. The hair didn’t come back.

Try not to think too deeply about that !

I do need to get myself out of the house for a decent amount of time though. I really need a good holiday I think, not just one spent being lazy in the house.

Picture. Meme. A cute little mostly white with black patches is sitting up on a tiny boat floating on calm water. The scene is just lit by the moon. The caption is "When you're just a cute dog on a boat, looking for a tennis ball"

There were a couple of cruise options I’ve been looking at. The main criteria are : not too far away, not hot, good places. I did enjoy the flying trips in and out of Norway and would like to see more. So … Option 1 :

Picture. We're looking at a map of the coast of Norway. There is a thin black line, joined with many red dots. It's the route of a cruise ship from Bergen in the South, to Kirkenes in the North.

That’s from Hurtigruten cruises (link) although I found that one from one of the cruise search sites. This looks like a very interesting cruise, especially in the shorter one way trip. Must research it a lot more to see if it could be made to work. The problem, is getting to or from Kirkenes in the North. You can fly there … from Oslo. So the travel around the cruise would be Gatwick to Bergen, then on the way back it would be Kirkenes to Oslo to Heathrow. I couldn’t see how I’d make that work. The there and back option would work a lot better.

Picture. We're looking at a map of Northern Europe. It's zoomed in a lot, showing just southern Norway and Sweden, Denmark, the top of Germany and a slice of the UK to the left. There's another route marked for the ship journey.

That’s another, much easier option going from Copenhagen to Molde Fjord and then back again with a side hop to Kiel in Germany. I think the flights worked out to going from Heathrow to Copenhagen, which makes it far easier for things like where do you leave the car. It’s a little awkward getting across from Gatwick to Heathrow, especially after being tired for travel. Better just to pile into the car and then use the remaining energy to cruise back down a hopefully quiet motorway.

Anyway, cruise didn’t happen this time because I was a bit too concerned about going away from home for an extended period where I wouldn’t be able to pop the medication to attack this ongoing skin condition.

Another option is a narrowboat cruise in the UK. This would be really valuable for informing the choices about the off in the future plan to get out of here and live on a boat. But I think I’d need to have a friend along for a narrowboat cruise for a) company and b) assistance with the locks and tying up the boat.

What’s these technical difficulties from the title ? I’ve had a look at another new game …

Picture. Meme. We're looking at an otter, swimming underwater. He's gripping a pair of water pipes quite tightly. The caption is "he needs those parts for his space ship, he's going to otter space"
It’s an older meme but it still checks out

The game I’ve been trying out is the brand new just released Starfield. I’ve been enjoying half watching a series of streams on it and it’s been intriguing up to what I’ve seen on it. I’d quite like to lose myself in it but … and this is a big but. It’s not unplayable when not installed on an SSD but the play experience definitely suffers to the point where I don’t want to open it again until I’ve migrated my system across to a bigger and better SSD.

Jargon buster – SSD is a Solid State Device storage thing. Whereas the older Hard Discs worked by having spinning discs with material that stored what was saved to them, Solid State Devices do that with electronic memory devices instead. Hard Discs take a lot of time to find what’s needed, SSDs just zap over to the data. They’re much faster in both finding stuff and retrieving stuff. But they were also subject to a massive premium on price, such that when Meltdown was built, it got a big for the time 500GB drive. I’ve now acquired a faster 2TB drive, I just need to install it.

The technical difficulties is definitely a TLDR. Basically, I have two suitable slots in my machine but one of them isn’t working. I think I know why … but available mental effort isn’t wanting to fix it that way. I’m having to ration that a bit at the moment. Anyway, instead of trying to make the dodgy slot work, I’m just going to acquire another slot. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, Starfield ?

Game screenshot. Starfield. We're looking at the side of a spaceship with all sorts of protrusions coming out of the sides. An orange planet is above us, half in shadow.
I did a space

It’s an intriguing game so far. It’s been heavily described as Skyrim in Space, which is a blessing and a curse. Skyrim was such a successful game with a go anywhere, do anything format. Translating that formula across to space makes for a very promising game from my point of view. Curse ? It looks like it’s inherited some of the user interface awkwardness from vanilla Skyrim. But … this is a Bethesda game, there are already mods out there to improve the user interface.

Game screenshot. Starfield. Our pilot is standing in front of a futuristic city. She's of medium skin tone, with faint blue hints in tied back hair. She's wearing a dark grey jumpsuit. In the background is a selection of people, standing around having a chat.
I did a ground

The thing I noticed a bit later there is the group of non player characters in the background. They’re all in different but lifelike poses. I walked past a different scripted conversation on my way out of the spaceport too. It’s a nice touch, whereas less technically complex games will quite happily do limited, unnatural poses, it looks like there’s more life in the background this time.

It’s a little thing but it’s tickled the geek in me.

Either way, I’m quite looking forward to going back into Starfield, hopefully I’ll be all up and running with the PC upgrade soon.

Time to sign off though – Hoping to enjoy a quiet week off work, it’s been a while coming. No sea cruise this time, I’ll keep that for later.

Cozy game, fun game, scary game, travelly game

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July 30, 2023

10:14 pm

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Hello everyone,

Thought I’d talk about a few games today. Yeah, I have a fair bit of game addiction but as addictions go, it’s a fairly benign one. (Unless you have the tendency to be still playing when the sun comes up. Oops).

Picture, meme. We're looking at four cartoon pictures of a pink person sitting on a couch, with a blue doctor with specs looking at them with a notepad. The captions are "Doc, I feel like I'm getting old", "Hmmm... tell me, did you play Elite when it first came out?" "Yeah I played it as a kid. It's my favourite game" and lastly a scribble on the notepad "Patient is basically dead."
Yep, the 1984 one

I think that ticks off cozy and travelly game. That was a case of seeing a meme, going yoink and modifying it to something a bit more appropriate than the Tony Hawks it had been modified to when I got my mitts on it. I really got stuck in to the original Elite and we went from the cassette tape version on to the disc drive version when we got the disc system. That’s a tale actually, we started with the BBC B micro which was released in December 1981. It loaded all its games in on cassette tape at a quick 1200 baud (bits per second), so loading up a game could take a little while plus sometimes the cassettes went bad. It really limited what could go into the games, so when our BBC B died due to flood damage (burst pipes over a winter) we got an insurance upgrade to a BBC Master (released 1986) which had a built in disc interface.

The disc version of Elite added in things like music for the docking computer, a set of missions and more ships. And now we’re on the fourth Elite game (Elite Dangerous) where I’ve traveled around the galaxy several times now.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at the top of a spaceship in silhouette, there is a long central body with an engine on each of a pair of thick outriggers coming from the back of the ship. Behind the ship is a purple wispy stream. Behind that is a dense starfield with the Milky Way ribbon to the left of the wispy stream.

That’s the Searching for Chamomile doing a little bit of exploring while I was moving my carrier from place to place. My character is back in the populated Bubble area now, while the carrier and a few of my ships are still 20,000 light years away. The objective of the new Dungeon Food Truck is to rejoin the carrier and maybe help out with the fuelling efforts to move it back.

I haven’t actually gone back into Elite for a couple of weeks. That’s a combination of not really knowing what to do in the game at the moment plus issues with my hands that are making it a bit painful to play sometimes.

That’s actually a big factor in another couple of games … the two Truck Simulator games. I found that they were good ones to quietly chill in while having that objective of growing the truck fleet and the character by moving Stuff from place to place. I need to have those clear objectives in the games, or I lose my way in them and drift away. The way the Truck Games do that is to have a big long list of cargo you can take from where you are to somewhere else and I’d try and pick something new to look at.

That was one thing about Elite, either trading to new places or traveling to new places for screenshots. And they’re very pretty too.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a space scene, with our blue and orange diamond shaped ship on the left. In the centre and right hand side, there are a pair of stripy, banded white and dark planets. In the centre and above them, is a bright white star. The starfield is very dense again.

But that’s not the ship game I’ve been enjoying lately. Let’s see …

Game screenshot. Dredge. We're looking at a daytime ocean with a gently rippling surface. Our little fishing boat is in the bottom centre. We can see outcroppings of land to the left and an islet to the right plus more land hidden in fog ahead of us. We've also got some of the game features on screen.
It “looks” calm …

That’s Dredge, at the really early days. The premise of the game is that you’ve traveled in your boat to a remote set of islands and you wake, with little memory of who or where you are. Pretty soon, you get your mission to find fish to sell to pay off a debt, plus more side missions as you go through the story. But … don’t stay out after dark …

Game screenshot. Dredge. We're looking at the ocean scene again but this time it's in the dark. The fog is close in, we can't see very much except the distant lights of a town and ... a collection of disembodied eyes on the water.
Eye aye

There we go … cozy game that I’ve really enjoyed. You’re not alone in its world, if you stay out at sea after dark then the scary things come out to say hi. And as the storyline proceeds, you travel to the four corners of the archipelago. I had a lot of fun with this one, I’ve finished the story (and it’s an excellent one) and I’ll hang around in there to finish the sidequests and the achievements.

Top game, would highly recommend. And for me, it guided me through its story in about 12 chilled out hours over a few sessions.

Another game I finished again just now is Deus Ex Human Revolution. I’m not sure you should really call a game where you play a cyborg soldier with swords in his arms a cozy game but this and Mankind Divided is one I keep going back to.

There’s something to be said for a really tight game that gets in, does its story and finishes off in a good amount of time. 12 to 20 hours is about right for that. Some sand box type games will see you taking far longer to play through. Mass Effect was a little cracker when it came out, with excellent gameplay, a great story and a length of around 20 hours again. Mass Effect Andromeda had improved gameplay (which worked) but fell down at being just too much, taking about 70-80 hours to play.

There’s such a thing as outstaying the welcome. The Expanse books do this a fair bit, although they are on the whole great books with lots of story and lore packed in. I’m on a quick book again now, Sons of Thor which is book 2 in the Star Breakers series by James David Victor. I rather enjoyed the really quick first book of the series of 9.

What’s next though ?

Another run through Deus Ex Mankind Divided at some point, finishing off the achievements in Dredge. I need to go back to Horizon Zero Dawn and Cyberpunk 2077 at some point. Plus there’s the cozy taxi game of Cloudpunk. One Military Camp is a curious builder game which I’ll run through. And I bought Offroad Mechanic Simulator in its release discount, this one looks like a move on from Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 which is another I really enjoyed.

One last pic before bed time ?

Game screenshot. Dredge. We're looking at a deserted island with a series of small houses and huts. Deserted, except for a scraggly rough looking dog that's looking hopefully at us. The caption starts "You reach out and gently pat the dog. Its eyes follow your hand, and it seems to understand you're not a threat."
Yes, you can pet the dog

Best sidequest ever.

Good night everyone.