Tag: games

A year in (Steam) games

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December 18, 2023

10:15 pm

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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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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.

Lost in a Workshop

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October 5, 2022

10:49 pm

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Hello everyone,

Gosh it’s been a bit of time again since the last post. I may have gotten myself quietly addicted to another game. Also got bugs and other issues again because of course I did !

Picture. We're looking at a sleepy dragon, curled up with his head resting on his front paws.
Zzzz

May also be struggling for energy. I might have mentioned bugs already :-D. One reason I didn’t post was because I wanted to stay away from posting during the Queen’s mourning period. Which might seem a little odd ? Seemed right to me.

There’s a weird one there actually. I adopted a special tribute picture on Facebook and Twitter for the period. I usually echo my picture on to Discord as well but it didn’t feel safe to do so. That’s very weird, as the Discord communities are the “safe” place usually, Facebook and Twitter are definitely not. And I did get a couple of people attempting to engage with me on an incident in the cricket … They’re blocked now. No hesitation, just block the idiots who you don’t know who are trying to endanger your mental health. Curate your space, it might make it a bit of an echo chamber but you really, really have to look after your own mental health and that means not giving the idiots a chance to affect that.

What happened in the cricket ? It’s a complex one, around the practice of Mankadding. This is when a batter is repeatedly getting a head start in attempts to get a run down to the other end. If the fielding side has enough, they can run them out if the batter has gone marching off before the bowler has completed the delivery. Note, it’s really difficult to stop in your stride as a bowler. The stealing of a few yards is called backing up and it’s something players are coached to do.

I call it cheating.

At the time, it finished off a game that England had salvaged into what was turning into an incredibly tense finish. Bit of an anticlimax and it took the attention away from Jhulan Goswani’s (wiki link) final game. The various commentators were saying it was legal but against the spirit of the game and it polarised the cricketing world into Everyone objecting, India people saying “well it’s in the laws”. So’s certain forms of tax evasion and other bits of cheating.

And then we find out a couple of days later that the England player had been repeatedly warned and the umpires informed about what was about to happen. I was much relieved when I heard that. Mankadding without a warning is really poor behaviour. Warning the cheating player is how it should be done and then yeah, full support for what the fielding side did.

A certain England non-playing captain has come out and said he’d call a Mankadded batter back … this is the same player who I think has been run out in this way several times. Good on the fielding side for calling him on the cheating. I don’t think he should have been allowed to remain as captain of the England side after saying that. (Moeen Ali is a far better person to run that side)

I don’t really think the player is at fault. It’s the coaching. The backing up had become part of the game, with it being ingrained into the behaviour on the field. I didn’t do it, partly because I was fast enough that I didn’t need to.

Enough for that rant – go by the facts. If someone comes out with “but it’s within the rules of the game”, so is most of what happens in football and that game is a mess for cheating. It happens in rugby too and that game is a bit too heavy in its rules, the rules can bog down the game and make it difficult to watch.

Oh ! That wasn’t why the tribute picture didn’t go on Discord. It feels odd that I considered Twit/book safe for it but not Discord. The communities I’m still in on Discord are good but whereas people in them will be inclusive in certain ways, they are very critical in others. And I wasn’t comfortable with having a monarchy related picture on there, which says really bad things about those communities. If you’re going to say you’re inclusive, you have to respect everyone … and that’s not consistent.

Game ?

Game screenshot. F1 Manager 22. We're looking at a road going off into the distance. A fence is to the right, a row of garages are to the left. A set of timings of in a column to the left. A white and black racing car is coming towards us, heavily sparking.
This is fine

That’s from F1 Manager 22, which isn’t the game I’m quite addicted to at the moment. It looks stunning, probably with assistance coming from the F1 racing sim game. The pit garage people look appalling, some of the worst people models seen since before the last decade. They’re nasty and indicative of how lumpy in quality this game is.

On one hand, it offers a curious strategic management layer which I’d like to get in to more. And the races are surprisingly compelling.

On the other hand, the F1 licence aspects are a complete mess and a waste of what the game should be. They shackle it down in ways including extremely limited variation in the canned commentary (anything leads to “That’s a terrible blow for the team!” and it’s also shackled to the current 10 teams in F1. There are numerous bugs in the race gameplay, although some of these are being addressed.

It is still a quite compelling game though. Mind you, I’ve spent more time in the old Motorsport Manager than F1 Manager 22 over the last couple of weeks, having restarted with a new team in a non-F1 style of racing.

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking down at a tabletop, which has various objects on the edges like a coffee cup, pencils and glue. In the centre there's a cutaway view of a building with 5 rooms with machines and tiny people within.
A humble beginning

That’s Little Big Workshop and I got instantly addicted to it. It’s cute, has pretty good consistent gameplay and it’s one where you can set things up and watch them run. A chilled out kind of game play. And the factory steadily expands as you make more stuff, sell more stuff and can buy more machines. So by the end, I had this :

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking at a sky eye view of the factory. There are a bunch more rooms, filled with either machines or place to put materials to put in the machines.
Busy bees

That was in the run up to completing the achievements on the base game. It’s a curious, fun little game filled with cuteness. Even down to what you have your people put together, like the bongos, skateboards, pedal cars, cute robots and …

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking at a zoomed in view of one of the rooms which is a stock room. The room is filled with big two legged mechs sized for one of the little people to ride in.
Behold my Cat Mech Army

Yep. Built a lot of those. I really enjoyed my time in this one, definitely enough to buy the DLC for it when it went on discount last night. I’ll save that one for later. it did have an issue though …

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking down at the rooms and machines again but this time, there is graphical corruption in the form of lines and an overlay.
That doesn’t look right …

I’ve mostly sorted it now by reducing the graphics quality and applying some out of game options but I was having to restart it every few hours due to increasing graphical corruption mayhem. What’s in the picture above was pretty mild. It got to heavy headache inducing flickering and became unplayable until a restart. I think my hardware is ok because other games aren’t affected plus the temperatures were good and it opened back up ok on an immediate restart. But …

I’ve had bugs over the past week. I should get tested but don’t have testing kits. I’ve been picking up a smell I’ve been interpreting as burnt or melted solder …

So the 1+1= has been happening and making me wonder if the game is leading up to an expensive graphics card failure. Or whether it’s just a coincidence and I’ve interpreted it wrong.

Yep, bugged again with another cold like thing which hasn’t gone away yet. And that’s on top of being affected by ginger poisoning again. I think that was contaminated ice cream although it could have been something from the foreign trip a month ago. The ginger is out of my system now, phew !

Hopefully not as long again before the next post, there’s been enough in here for several I think. I’ve just been distracted by game and lacking energy again.

Stay safe everyone, be well !

Thinking about the games I want

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August 15, 2022

10:52 pm

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Hello everyone,

I mention playing the games a lot. Probably too much :-). But there are a couple in my head that are games I think I’d really like to play, if they existed.

Picture. Meme. A grey and black striped cat is sitting at a laptop keyboard, with paw on the mouse. The caption is "...and I have extensive experience writing computer code, including but not limited to OIC, BTW, BRB, IMHO, LMAO, ROFL, TTYL
TLDR 2 many TLAs

I’ll start by going way back … and this goes all the way back to the sci fi sensational mini series (well, it was back then – it was heavily sold by ITV) V. This saw Visitor aliens come to Earth with a promise of uplifting our technology in return for specially synthesized chemicals to ward off environmental collapse at their home planet.

Of course, they had a more sinister motive and it’s up to our heroes (the core characters) to lead a rebellion to get the Visitors to leave. There was a recent remake series which was pretty good … but was cancelled before it got a chance to tell its tale all the way through.

Anyway – the game back then would have been about flying a shuttle up to the mothership and then getting off and fighting through it to take control. A bit ambitious on the home computers of the day, with those being the BBC Micro, Spectrum and Commodore 64, with V coming out in 1983. It’d be a rare game that would combine all those now, although they’re getting more common with released games like No Mans Sky and Elite Odyssey, with Star Citizen offering that in the future. Games like Space Engineers and Empyrion probably come close too but they’re limited by being crafting games and those tend to hit a point where they grind into unplayability.

Starfield, a coming soon from Bethesda, might offer some of this gameplay. It’s a future scifi with spaceships from the same stable as gave us Skyrim for poking things with swords and the post apocalyptic Fallout 4. From what we’ve seen, I think it’ll have a well developed run around and shoot game but it may be more limited on the flying. But we shall see there.

Picture. We're looking at a very curvy little red sports car, with a couple of headlights popping out from the wings. It's an older car, with a hard top covering the bit where the driver goes.
Racy in red

I play a huge amount of Motorsport Manager. They did an incredible job with this one when it came out in November 2016. I am currently at 2016 (coincidence) hours in it and that’ll easily crack 3000 probably. Why so many ? They got the gameplay level just about right, with a nicely developed way of improving the cars. The racing is good. It’s nicely varied with the F1 style, GT cars and the endurance racing. It keeps some of the unwanted complexity away from the player. It Is Very Easy To Play. In fact, that last is why I have 2000+ hours in the game. I can have it running while having my dinner or when my hands or arms just don’t want to support more active types of gameplay.

But whereas Motorsport Manager is all about racing around different tracks, my idea turns that round. Instead of running a racing team, how about running one of the tracks ?

You take the park crafting ideas of games like Jurassic Park or Coaster games and make a race track instead. Maybe have multiple variations of track available. Make sure the track keeps busy. Upgrade it so your track can run bigger events.

I dunno, could be a nice variation and I don’t think it’s been done before. There’s been track editing in games (I’ve never played) like Trackmania and there’s a new one called Race League (which doesn’t look too good from the reviews) but I haven’t seen one that’s about managing a track.

4 Pictures. Each picture has the viewer looking out of a pile of snow towards the happy face of dogs who have dug through the snow to find them.
Good Doggos

My third one (which is about as much as my Brain can think of today with the end of the heat!) is a rescue game. There are a few of these out there. Like Rescue HQ which has you setting up a Ambulance, Fire and/or Police HQ. Or Stormworks where you build rescue vehicles and go out on missions with them. Rescue HQ looks curious actually, I might look more seriously at it when it’s on sale again.

What I’m thinking of goes back to Thunderbirds. What about a game that lets you run International Rescue ? That’d be pretty cool. To be a typical game in this genre, you’d have to start small and build up to the suite of specialist vehicles that we saw in Thunderbirds. But I think it’s something I’d like to have a look at.

Stormworks sounds like it could eventually be on that scale. It’s a game where you design and build your own rescue vehicles, starting from small limited purpose boats. But it also looks very fiddly and doesn’t really pass the “I’d enjoy that” test. I’ll have a look at Rescue HQ when it’s on sale again but I’m thinking more about the rescue end of it, not the police side of it. You know, the varied and interesting disaster scenarios that were a core of Thunderbirds.

Meme Picture. We're looking at 3 Star Wars Stormtroopers in their white helmeted armour sitting at a table drinking blue milk. The caption is "It was an insurance scam. I mean, come on, the guy who blew it up was the dude's son. Like, I know they say they're estranged but they were clearly in on it together for the insurance money. There were delays during construction and Vader knew it had design flaws - it was never going to make back its investment so they staged a rebel raid. And Vader was the only one to survive. It's so obvious.
Hmm …

It is suspicious when you think about it. Our rescue inc would have to do better :-D.

How about other games that are definitely on the way ? What am I looking forward to ? I mentioned Starfield already but there’s a couple more in particular on the list :

Cosmoteer – this is an indie game that’s all about building starships and throwing them into battle with other starships. I’ve played the demo of it from a few years ago and it is very promising indeed. It has a combination of simplicity with variation. The simplicity makes it easy to understand, the variation between shield and weapon types opens up the strategy element of figuring out what the best approach will be for your starship brawler.

Airport games – I’m curious about these. They’re like the race track thing in that you build up your facility and upgrade it to handle better flights. But the ones out at the moment Airport CEO, Sim Airport, Sky Haven all have flaws which keep me away from them.

Deadstick – this one looks sadly dead and it’s a shame. It was a flight simulator built around small bush planes. You’d take small parcels and bigger passengers around an Outback style map, doing deliveries. I think I’d have absolutely loved this game. (And should really try out the similar but sci fi Frontier Pilot Simulator again)

Nebulous Fleet Command – is a space tactical combat game. There’s a few of these coming soon.

Jagged Alliance 3 – I loved playing Jagged Alliance 2. It was a real time / turn based tactical battle game with a great strategic layer on top. The mission was to recapture a 3rd world country that had been taken over in a coup by an insane Evil Queen. Fantastic game and the more recent game didn’t cut it. Hopefully the just announced JA3 is a good one.

Last one – Starship Simulator – this one has you as a crew member (of any rank) on board a starship that’s going to feel very similar to the model set up by Star Trek. It looks absolutely stunning, with a fully modelled starship to wander around in. Hopefully they pull off a good game with it too.

That’s it for today I think – really struggled in the last heatwave but hopefully we’re through that now. It wasn’t a dry heat like in July, it was a muggy hammer of conditions with the atmosphere feeling twice as dense as it should do. We haven’t had a proper thunderstorm here today but there’s still chance later in the week.

Hope things are tolerable where you are !

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Reading, Gaming, Thinking Diverse

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August 9, 2022

12:12 am

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Hello everyone,

Had a quiet week off last week, which was pretty much the plan. I did think I’d find my way over to Cardiff or otherwise out of the house. I’m a little disappointed in myself that didn’t happen, although when I think about going to places like Cardiff, I’ll go to regular haunts, see what I didn’t buy before and … don’t buy it again. It would have been good to get out and about though.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a sad grey cat with blue eyes looking over the top of a sofa to left of picture. The caption is "I spent all day sleeping ... Now I'm tired."
Why does this always happen ?

So what did I get up to outside of hiding indoors all the time ? Lots of gaming. Lots of reading. Lots of music listening. Thinking about the next laptop, although the trojan scare I talked about last post is resolved. The warning popups haven’t been back. Phew ! So the laptop will hang in there for another little while. It’s let me catch up a bit on the new music, which includes acquisitions from a recent steam sale in the Skyrim, Rimworld and Fermi Paradox soundtracks.

Still not played Rimworld.

I did have a look at this one though :

Game screenshot. Frostpunk. We're looking at a dark scene where snow covers a barren land except for a circle in the centre which is bare and thawed. In the centre, there is a tall cylinder structure with a fire coming out of the top. There are tents clustered in a circle at its base. The words are "Our city. Day 1. Population 80."
Chilly out

That’s Frostpunk, which is a survival base builder strategy game. A new ice age has hit the Earth and your ragged band of survivors are huddled around a steam generator that is the only thing between them and a frostbitten demise. It’s a hell of a game, superbly balanced (I’ve watched a few playthroughs of the scenarios) and really, really hard. I got my city up to about 300 people and almost the end of the Londoners storyline before abandoning that run. I couldn’t get them harvesting coal fast enough to keep the generator running and could see the inevitable death spiral coming.

I’ll probably be back in this one. Other first looks for me include Fermi Paradox, which is a very simplified thing where you have a cluster of star systems that independently evolve intelligent life. Will they survive ? Will they thrive ? Will they embark on conquests of the stars ? A curious game, maybe not ready for a recommendation though.

I also completed the last achievements on Car Mechanic Simulator 2021, so I’ve been looking at CMC 2018. It’s ok, the newer game is better in pretty much every way and it has mouse acceleration which can’t be turned off. Never put mouse acceleration in your games people … I’ve also been looking at Rover Mechanic Simulator, which is the same thing with a limited number of rovers that you rebuild from your pod on Mars.

There’s something about the mechanic games … and other simulator type games have carved out their own little niche too. With the car one, it’s that feeling of progress as you tear down a car and rebuild it into something shiny.

Sacrificed some of the life in my neck to Rogue Tower – I could do with looking at my chair and replacing it with one that still allows it to raise. That’s an odd thing that … The posture I’m in at the moment is ok for eye height with my eyes being roughly level to the top half of the screen. That’s ideal … But when I’m in a game like Rogue Tower, I’ll lean forwards which lowers my head so I’m looking up and wrecking my neck. Oops.

Oh and there’s the truck games too. I’m enjoying these again now having recognised and gotten used to some of the irritations with the AI of the other vehicles.

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Sim 2. We're in the cabin of a lorry, looking right towards our passenger. He's the yellow of a Pikachu (small cute animal with a lightning shaped tail).
Where to Pikachu ?

I’m doing that thing again … Where I thought I’d rattle through some stuff fast and not have that much to talk about :-D. Reading ?

Finished The Human Division by John Scalzi, it’s book 5 in the Old Man’s War series that I would happily recommend. It’s like an inspired by Starship Troopers book, where the lead character in the first 3 books finds himself leaving Earth as a 75 year old to be reborn into a super starship trooper body that’s then thrown at Humanity’s enemies. Of which there are many. Yet there’s more nuance here, as they’ll talk about what’s actually going on in the universe. And you steadily get a feeling of “Are we the baddies ?” I’m curious as to where it’ll go in the last book, with its foreboding title of The End Of All Things. But not yet, because I’m indulging the diverse reading thing by going into Elizabeth Bear’s Ancestral Night.

I mentioned diversity … a comment in a conversation got me thinking about the people I follow and support through things like twitch subscriptions. I like to try and keep myself honest there with a little bit of internal watchdogging. I have a little concern about what I’ve spotted there …

First up is the subscriptions – I’ve moved these around a little bit. I’m down to 9 Twitch subscriptions now, they’re all actually women now. I was actively subscribing to a bloke but ended that because he wasn’t doing the interesting content any more. Similar with another lady streamer. And the other bloke streamer lost my sub due to behaviour in his community. They’re all white too, none are people of colour. Not sure what that says about me to be honest. There are a couple of threads there :

The streamer communities I’m involved with don’t raid into people of colour streams much at all, so the exposure to hook me in doesn’t happen. However, I will mention Nathan Whatiskiss who I know as a wonderful roleplayer (but I haven’t seen his gaming content) and TrooperSJP who is another wonderful roleplayer. I don’t follow Trooper because he misbehaves with how he self promotes his own streams (he breaches rules on discords that aren’t his).

I think that’s the main reason why my follows are missing the people of colour, because the rare times people raid into them, I’ll quickly skip into a stream done by someone I do actively follow. Maybe I should give the raided a bit of a chance more often. Perhaps it’s a problem more on Twitch’s end, where people of colour might not be getting the same exposure.

The male female split is slightly deceptive too, as I actively maintain Patreon subs to 1.5 men. (The 0.5 is shared between Tashnarr and TheWanderingInn for the 40k layers model painting show).

The question someone asked was actually more about LGBTQIA+. The split on there for my subs is 3 straight, 1 bi, 1 pan, 2 lesbian and 2 where I have no idea. And that last ? is something I’m very ok with because we should only know where people are on those categories if they want to tell us, it’s not something that really should matter. Oh and there’s a trans person in that list too. And a person who would quite happily be first in the queue for the Probing when the aliens land.

Personally, where people place themselves on the LGBTQIA+ doesn’t really matter to me. I’ll go back to the series Another Life there (scifi series, in space, very tense and atmospheric, dramatic) where the character I was most interested in was Zayn who is played by the non-binary JayR Tinaco (imdb link). The character was interesting from an intelligence and challenging dialogue point of view. They also came over as knowing what they were doing, which was key in this particular series.

That’s the thing about diversity – our differences make us strong. And interesting. They give different perspectives on how to live, laugh and love. And what people get up to in the bedroom and with whom really isn’t any of our concern. If people love each other, they should have the chance to explore that without prejudice.

What really matters is (easy geek points on offer here) being excellent to each other, in all ways.

Picture. Meme. A sad looking cat with big eyes is laying down looking at us. The caption is "It hurts when someone you love says mean things like..." "It's time to wake up"
One more minute ?

It was definitely a bit of a wrench this morning switching from the time off timescales to a work from home timescale where I’m actively working from 7.50am.

I think I’ll leave this one there. I’m a little concerned as to whether a bit of prejudice has crept in with the stream watching, although that’s mostly down to who I get raided into (A stream raid is where a person finishes and takes their audience over to another person to watch). I should give the raided a bit more of a chance, it’s how you find fun people to watch. That said though, of the channels that twitch is showing in the shortcut list at the moment, none of them look like people of colour. (Oh wait, there’s Caustic Phoenix coming in with the Pink Pixels show – there’s one !). There are none being promoted on Twitch’s front page at the moment. I’m not watching the lovely Caustic because I was watching Tashnarr already and Ashlinaa (new name !) on the laptop and the Pink Pixels show will run on too late.

Perhaps it’s twitch that has the problem.

Stay safe everyone, be well, be good to each other.

May resemble puddle

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July 17, 2022

9:01 pm

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Hello everyone,

We have a heatwave on …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our spaceship is parked on a planet, to the right of shot. We're pointing towards an orange sun that is dominating the horizon. We can only see half of it, stretching across three quarters of the picture.
Fetch the sunburn lotion !

It’s been a while since I did spaceships actually ! One of my strategies for not getting too hot currently involves adding as little heat as I can to the situation :-D. And as Elite Odyssey maxes out the graphics card, I haven’t been in that game for a while. Computer do work, computer make heat. But that’s ok because there’s other games that are still really enjoyable but don’t need the computer to do as much work.

Like Motorsport Manager, it’s now reached the mid 2050s in my campaign and I’m about to move up to the next higher up league. I still play this one so much because it gives good racing to watch and it’s still a challenge to get the win in there, although I do know a lot of the tricks and ways to make strategies work. (A lot of that is math).

American Truck Simulator has been good as well.

Game screenshot. American Truck Simulator. Our mostly black truck is on a road in the foreground, driving to left of shot. Behind, is a sandy scene sparsely populated with light grasses. Mountains are in the distance but a bit closer, there are a series of radio telescope dishes pointing upwards.
Hunting for signals

The Truck Games are nicely chilled out. I think one reason I like them is that I can set a route up through the World of Trucks system (or the non online options) and just go. And that’s about the limit of the thought required. I can give Brain a rest while being in the game. Other games need a bit too much Brain than I’m willing to give in order to learn them, or the gameplay isn’t restful.

I might actually be taking advantage of the heat … got the freezer doing a defrost at the moment. It’s actually been a good opportunity for that, I’ve only had to chip away the ice a couple of times in the last month to break my ice cubes free.

I know, being domestic. Out of character.

Not looking forward to tomorrow, we’re expecting temperatures around 37 degrees C, in UK houses that aren’t set up to handle that kind of temperature. I’ll have my fans going all day … I may actually do an out of the house run tomorrow evening … The car got the air con and so will the cinema for a potential hiding in an air con building for a while.

Going into the office isn’t viable, it’s not going to be particularly habitable in there at the moment. (Air recirculation, no cooking and buildings that catch the heat). I do need to be going back into the office more though, being static at home isn’t doing me much good.

What else has been going on ? Lots of cricket on the telly, with series ongoing involving the England ladies and England men teams. It’s been good to watch, especially with newcomers like Issy Wong coming through to the senior side. She’s raw and has a lot of potential with the bowling. Sophia Dunkley is already regularly turning that potential into match winning performances. It’s good to see. Not sure if I’m seeing similar potential come through to the men’s side but we’ll see there.

Books have been happening too. Still in the middle of Helsreach, but I did complete Starship for Sale by M.R. Forbes. That one’s well worth a look. It’s worth mentioning that you can dip in and out of this one quickly due to the chapters being really short … And it rattles along at a merry pace with our two boys Matt and Ben being whisked along on a wild ride as (spoilers …). It saves up some surprises right up to the end too. Worth a peek, not just for Matt and Ben, and I’m curious to see how the story unfolds during the next books.

I’m currently in The Worst of All Possible Worlds, third in the series by Alex White where we have magic and technology intermixed in a sci fi space universe. It’s good and I’m very curious as to how he wraps up this trilogy. It’s been pretty blood thirsty (and caution warning – creative with that too, there’s lots of description of gore).

Right – I’d better sign off and fetch something cold again … Tashnarr stream is on (which is also convenient because it takes very few cpu cycles to show a stream, therefore less heat!) and I’m feeling like diving into book again.

Stay safe everyone, hopefully find some chilliness amongst the heat.

Hello it’s toasty

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July 9, 2022

11:07 pm

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Hello again,

Me again – I think I’ve needed a bit of a rest from writing things. Could be because I’m diving more into the work stuff again, where I put the energy into what I’m doing in working hours and feel more like chilling out with reading or games in the evening with that resulting in me not really wanting to write stuff. But it’s more like having trouble hitting the Add New Post button despite having things to talk about.

Picture. An orange dog is lying down in a big collection of ice cubes. The caption is "It's too bloody hot today"
Yes I know. I have summoned the spelling bees

It has gone very warm here … I last did spaceships on the 12th of June and there’s no way I’ll go back until things cool down a bit. Elite pushes the graphics card really hard (because it’s an unoptimised mess) and that turns into heat going into the room. So no space ship for a bit. That said though … it’s still pretty.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at an icy white planet marred only by the tyre tracks of our buggy. Our pilot is standing on a rock to the bottom left. Our buggy is parked behind, with 6 red lit wheels. A spaceship is parked beyond. The sky is a lovely pink on the left transitioning to purple on the right.
Preparing to scout

This is the latest ship in the fleet, the Searching for Chamomile. The callsign is T-CK13 after the lovely Teacakes 13 (Twitch link) who battles various health issues (don’t we all !) and time availability (same again – day job!) to bring us no commentary gameplay streams of No Mans Sky. That’s another space game which I should have a look at but I keep bouncing off it for some reason.

Anyway, I thought I’d make my latest objective be one of exploring planets again and checking out the wildlife. All my scout ships (well, most of them 😀 ) are named Searching For … things and this time Chamomile came up as a hardy plant. Haven’t done much in that quest yet, I’ll wait for things to cool down a bit.

One thing spaceship related that I have been enjoying is watching Psyche’s streams. She’s a bubbly bundle of chaos from Northern Ireland who likes streaming the space games and there’s also been lots of Rimworld chaos too. Well worth checking out. Here’s the old twitch linky thing. I haven’t been watching long at all but with me rearranging who some of my Twitch subscriptions go to, she’ll be getting one of the ones that have been cancelled.

So – Twitch subs … what’s that mean ? The benefits include little emote pictures that you can use across Twitch chats. Plus it gives a bit of money to the streamer which means they can continue entertaining us on the screen instead of having to … quit that and get an actual job in order to afford rent, food and electricity and the other things.

Twitch is feeling like a rough place for streamers. The organisation takes way too high a cut of the money that viewers send in, plus because it’s live, you pretty much have to choose one (or maybe two) only to watch at once. So at the moment, it’s having fun watching Tashnarr playing Subnautica. She’s doing hard core runs where if you die, it’s new save time. Not dead yet tonight but there’s been a couple of close calls. Tash is always great fun to watch and put daftness into chat with.

Oh and sometimes the Twitch people will play a game you’re interested in and give you an idea of whether you’d want to buy it. Or they play games like No Mans Sky where you enjoy other people playing more than you enjoy the game itself.

Game screenshot. American Truck Simulator. We're looking at a roadway on a small bridge. In the distance we can see a shallow waterfall. Our green truck is on the right.
Water … falling

I’ve been enjoying switching from the European roads over to American Truck Simulator with map packs appearing courtesy of the Steam sale that’s just finished. It’s curious seeing the differences between the two games. Both ATS and European Truck Sim 2 use the same underlying engine, the trucks and roads are different. American trucks have the long noses, European trucks are more of a slab front with the engine underneath. It feels like the loads are heavier in the US trucks, although that could be what the World of Trucks service offers. The US roads are definitely more forgiving than the occasionally very tight European roads. But the European maps have more features in them and things to look at.

Whereas I was feeling frustrated in the Euro game, I’ve been enjoying playing with the American trucks.

Oh ! Did I get anything in the Steam sale ? I bought Fermi Paradox and Disco Elysium plus soundtracks for Skyrim, Rimworld and the two games above. Fermi Paradox is a game about development of alien civilisations, Disco Elysium is a role playing adventure game where you’re a cop who’s lost his memory and he has to investigate a rather curious murder. But not all is as it seems.

I’d better wrap up soon so I can dive into book … Reading has been happening, much reading. Completed books from the last few weeks are :

Dune – think I mentioned that. I’m not sure if I’ll even go into Dune Messiah to be honest.

Machine by Elizabeth Bear was an interesting one. Perhaps a bit too much in the psychology side but I was kept in there by a highly intriguing unfolding mystery.

The Last Colony by John Scalzi was book 3 in his Old Man’s War series. This is in a developing universe of his where humanity goes to the stars, to find that they’re pretty crowded with alien races. Most of whom don’t like humans much, mostly due to how humans treat them. Nothing new there, good commentary :-D. I’ll be curious to see how this moves on in Book 5 (book 4 is an alternate perspective retelling of book 3). J.Scalzi is a good author to keep coming back to.

Current books are Starship for Sale by M.R.Forbes. It’s heavy on the world building with it being the first book in a series but that’s ok. It’s good world building. Our two friends start out going to a Virtual Reality games place and before they know it, they’re being hustled into buying an odd starship with a very curious occupant. I’m enjoying it, will come back for more in the series. Oh and “books” is Helsreach from the 40k universe. I have a 30+ day reading streak going in Kindle at the moment and Helsreach is a paper back. So I’m in two books to keep that Kindle streak.

Nearly went to see cinema things yesterday, chose chilling out instead. It’s been a while …

Picture. A hopefully looking dog is looking up directly at the camera. The captions are "I see you haz a hot dog ..." and "I too like hot dogs"
Hmmm. Hot dogs

I like hot dogs, good cinema munchie. Oh, another reason I didn’t go is because Everything Everywhere has pushed out and while the latest Thor and Top Gun sequel have potential, wasn’t feeling it yesterday. Maybe next Friday. I was feeling a bit blasted yesterday after I closed up the work laptop.

Work’s been going well after I switched late last year. It was good catching up with one of the people from the old team too when being in the office on Wednesday this week. But if you know what I mean by Spoons, I throw all my spoons at the work stuff at the moment and it doesn’t leave that many over for home stuff. That’s one reason why I like the Truck Games, they don’t need much real thought while giving a definite sense of Progress happening.

Motorsport Manager is another I’m continuing to enjoy, after almost 1900 hours now. But that one needs a bit more thought.

Time to devote some of those thoughts to enjoying Tashnarr (still not dead yet) and Starship for Sale.

Be well everyone ! Stay Safe. Try not to let what’s happening in the world (it crazy innit) get you down.

Lording it …

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June 20, 2022

10:05 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again hasn’t it. I think I was getting ready to post something up again and then bugs hit … Thumbnail ?

Picture. Cartoon. A grizzled cowboy is lurking behind a bush holding a rope that is connected to a plank of wood holding up a big box. The box is poised to drop over a book case. An unsuspecting stick man approaches ...
Yep, this would work

So … what’s been happening ? Bugs, books and … there’s gotta be another B word in there. Nope, not coming … Went to Lords as well for the Interservices T20. More on that later and pictures for another post. Le Mans watching happened as well, plus I had last week off work. Timed that to coincide with a couple of recovery days after Le Mans and the Interservices cricket.

What’s first – games are always up there … Looking backwards, I’ve indulged in another run through Deus Ex Human Revolution and the sequel Mankind Divided will follow. I dunno quite what it is I like about those games. They don’t do everything that other fps do but what they get absolutely right is the core gameplay. They’re very solid games and have a good story running through them.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Human Revolution. We're looking at a holographic display. It looks like a series of hexagonal dot lights on a hemisphere. Inside, we see a globe that could be the Moon. To the right, we see a big wall mounted display with a prospective Moon Base.
May not contain actual moon base

(Spoiler – not been to the Moon in game but there will hopefully be a third game made to finish off this story properly, it might go to the Moon).

I really enjoy these games and while the 2012 Human Revolution does look dated if you know what to look for (the polygon maps are pretty blocky), it still looks the part and plays great. Looking forwards to moving on to Mankind Divided again. While I kinda bounced off Horizon Zero Dawn (also a first person role playing game shooter), I happily go back to the newer Deus Ex games as comfort games. I dunno, it’s kinda, I know what to do, how to play them so I can enjoy the game without needing to learn new systems for how to play it.

Motorsport Manager has also been happening … with a tendency to have sore wrists and arms, having a hands off game that’s still very engaging has been very valuable. That’s why it’s hit 1844 hours played since being released in Nov 2016 … I hit the end of Phase 3 of my self made challenge there, thought about restarting but have gone into a Phase 4 instead. Phases ?

Phase 1 – win the championship with the F1 style car.

Phase 2 – win the next championship with GT racing cars.

Phase 3 – win the last championship with the 6 hour race endurance cars.

And now I’m back to Phase 1 in the F1 style cars with the worst team I could join and I’ll build that up to where it beats the first team I built.

It’s a fairly hands off game, where you directly do the setups (this can be modded out) and the race strategy. The AI does a good job on its end too although changes from wet to dry weather catch it out.

And I can happily play it too whereas I haven’t opened Truck Game since 1st June because I was getting frustrated with road traffic accidents from murderous AI and it was hurting my wrist and arm.

Bugs … Yep. Had bugs. Pretty sure these were from a work reconnect event, the boss had the bugs as well at pretty much the same time. And there was someone who almost certainly brought in the fast flu that did the rounds around then. Anyway, that affected me for about a week, at which point I was in need of some downtime anyway. Pretty sure it wasn’t anything more sinister than a fast flu. I’m double vaccinated and boosted against the Plague plus I’m pretty sure I had it two years ago. This flu was affecting me but it wasn’t nearly as bad as probable covid with its coughing so much I think I blacked out a couple of times and assorted other symptoms.

Lords happened last week. I’ve been noticing increasing reclusiveness tendencies where I’ll take an excuse to stay in and do stuff indoors instead of heading out. So I haven’t been to the cinema much at all lately because I’ve been either bugged or enjoying the cricket on the telly. Wouldn’t mind seeing Everything Everywhere All At Once, that’s top of the list. Also Top Gun 2, maybe Doctor Strange but with what I’ve heard about Jurassic World 3, maybe not that one.

Lords ?

Picture. We're looking at a wide expanse of green cricket field, with the cut strips in the middle. The grass is cut as a checkerboard grid of various greens. 2 players wear red, the rest wear blue. In the background, the light red of the Lords Pavilion and to the right is the white double decker Warner stand.
Lovely day for it

Lords was splendidly turned out as usual. It’s a really old stadium now (opened in 1814) and they’ve steadily rebuilt, maintained and upgraded it over the years. It still has the signature slope (look at the advertising boards in front of the Pavilion) and the Old Father Time weathervane is still hanging out. I was a little disappointed that the big shop is gone and replaced with a smaller one. That’s part of the redevelopment of two of the stands (out of shot) which have been rebuilt into double decker stands now with shade. I sat in the old version for a session one year and I was absolutely baking and had to retreat to shade. One curiosity was that there was a big toilet area behind the old stands, that’s gone now. (Replaced by more loos under the stands).

It was a bit of a wrench to get away from the house but I enjoyed the day thoroughly. I might have to look into overnight stopping in the future though, leaving the house at before 7am and returning at past 11pm makes for a very long day even with most of it being chilling out in the stands watching the game and occasionally trying to capture the good bits.

Picture. We're zoomed in on the big green cricket field from before. In the centre, we see the 3 dark blue stumps of the wicket. To the right is a man in blue with batting pads, gloves and helmet. The bat has gone through a shot. To the left is a man in red and black wearing keeping pads and the gloves. He is clutching the ball in his hands. There is another man in red and black in the foreground looking away from us.
Disappointed batter, happy keeper

That’s me with the normal compact digital camera (Canon Ixus 265, disclosure note : all bits bought by me) with it zoomed in to its optical limit. I have it braced on my knee for the shots. Most of them turned out pretty well and have the action centred although there were a number of junk ones where I moved the camera off target. I need to see what I have, you can’t see much on the mobile phone screen. I was happy with the picture above, it’s from the instant that the keeper held on to a thin edge from the batsman for another wicket.

Last bit for today – I’ve been going through some books lately …

Not sure if I said anything about A Bad Deal For The Whole Galaxy (Alex White). It’s book 2 of a space opera series set in a universe where magic and technology intermingle. He’s done a cracking job with the two books so far and I’ll go back to the conclusion soon. I’d thoroughly recommend them as something different. First book is A Big Ship At The End Of The Universe.

Read Dune again. Honestly didn’t enjoy that. It feels somewhat dated now. The pacing is mixed, so some parts feel like they stall while he’s world building, some parts with the big story moments feel very rushed. I like the idea of the personal shields … but the interaction with the lasguns feels very wrong to me. (They go boom spectacularly). That felt like a Plot Hammer that just didn’t make sense to me. And those go pretty much all the way through the book.

Dune is a great story … I’d recommend watching any of the movies. Yep. Even the David Lynch one. Especially the SyFy miniseries. And even the new half a movie. They all tell the story in a far more active way than in the rather drawn out book. I’ll go back to books 2 and 3 at some point but I’m expecting another grind. I won’t go further into Dune than that.

Next up was Machine by Elizabeth Bear. A curious book. It has a great mystery in it that’s set up by a space trauma rescue specialising doctor in a space ambulance heading off to check out a historic generation ship that’s mysteriously appeared going too fast in the wrong place. Oh and there’s another modern ship in trouble next to it. The generation ship people are in cryosleep, everything’s abandoned. And our trauma rescue doctor lady is trying to figure out what’s happened. I really enjoyed the mystery unfolding through the book.

What I didn’t enjoy was the “woke” nature running all the way through. The author is very big on right minding and makes it a core theme of the book. I’d very happily live in her world. It’s a great world and I heartily agree with the principles. They’re just laid on very thick, they’re constantly there and it’s just a little too much and I thought it became a distraction. But I was highly enjoying the various AI, human and other species characters Elizabeth Bear creates for the book and as said, it’s a scifi universe I’d love to live in. Compare that to the seductive Starship Troopers, which sucks you in to Yay! Heinlein! until you ask whether you’d want to live in that world. Even without the Bugs, that’s a nope.

Next up is The Last Colony by John Scalzi, it’s book 3 in the Old Man’s War series. Now there’s a universe you’d think twice about living in. It’s very deathy :-D. And I’m enjoying it so far. Scalzi has a fun writing style that keeps me amused.

I think that’s enough for today. I’ll almost certainly develop a few more of these later.

Oh ! Lego happened too.

Seeya ! Be safe, stay well.