Tag: games

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.

Mining for bugs, chaotically

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May 16, 2022

9:36 pm

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Hello everyone,

I need to hit that “Add post” button more often ! Things are in my head that aren’t getting chance to escape. First though, one of my more weird thumbnail pics …

Picture. There is a blue implement with handles at the top and some black fittings between. There are a pair of arms below a hinge in the centre. The arms curl round to a couple of yellow pads facing each other. (It's a clamp) Two green dragons with flying goggles are on either side of the handles.
Get it good and tight boys

I got that a few weeks ago but hadn’t applied it to its given purpose since acquiring it. What’s it for ? My flightstick and throttle are a bit chunky … Let’s see :

Picture. We're looking at my red fluffy dwagon sitting on a very chunky joystick. The stick itself is about 8 inches tall, slightly taller than the dragon. It is covered in switches, most of which have lights.
Dwagon at 9 o’clock !

If you pull back on that, you’re giving it a fair bit of leverage. I had the joystick and throttle on a wooden (chopping!) board to extend the reach on my desk so that I could push the throttle all the way forwards without it clashing on the upper deck of my desk. Trouble was, pulling back on the stick put in all that leverage which made the board come with the stick. The clamp stops that.

Which means …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at the back of a spaceship with several engines firing away. The paint scheme is dark purple at the back, light blue at the front. We're in the midst of a dimly lit rock field and above the ship and to the left, we see a light orange yellow planet which the ring system is orbiting.
Awaiting an unsuspecting asteroid

Yep. Been back in Elite Dangerous again, with a new ship. This one is another tribute ship, the Dances with Snowmen. The callsign there is -K1R1-, for 2dKiri, who is a lovely Austrian lady who streams games in the afternoon. A happy soul who will make you feel better as she’s playing through the games. And I managed to catch up with one of the names on my ever expanding names list there with a miner. The Dancer has just been molesting rock type rocks so far but I think I’ll take it into ice belts at some point to do core mining. That’s where you blow up ice balls to get the very precious Void Opals inside.

It was good being back in … although Elite is a hard game to love at the moment. There are a few too many bugs in the game right now that just aren’t being fixed. So on Saturday, the bugs list started at not being able to see the good bits of the belt (didn’t matter), through to the market bug and topping off with my first trip through hyperspace from the carrier bridge ending up with :

Screenshot. We're looking at a Crash Reporting dialogue window with a browser window hiding behind it.
Yep. It’s the crash reporting tool

Yep. Crash to desktop. Everything was ok when I logged back in again and I got enough mining done to pay for the new ship and a selection of new services that went to the carrier. That is, before another bug stopped me checking out any rocks for the remainder of that session. (You use a prospector to see what’s in the rock and then mine the best ones – the prospector bugged out).

But yeah. First time back in for a while, I enjoyed chilling out blasting at the rocks for a while.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're inside a hangar, looking at our pilot who is wearing a mostly white flight suit. Our ship is in the distance, somewhat dimly lit but we can make out a slim side profile with the dark colour at the back and light purple at the front to the right.
Keep ‘er warm, back soon

Today’s jump through hyperspace actually worked ok as well. Ok so … explanation time – Elite does its travel between stars using hyperspace. The main ships you fly typically make jumps of 20 light years or so, although you can shove that up to 75 or more light years with special stripped down fits. But 20 light years is good for a fully laden trading ship. It takes them about 50 seconds to go from star to star. (4th wall explanation – it’s taking that time to load in the info for the system you’re jumping to). The fleet carriers can jump 500 light years at a time … but it’s a special system that takes 15 minutes from command to execution and you need to specially mine the fuel.

Yep. Good being back in, there are a few too many bugs still in the game though that should have been eliminated by now.

Going from one Frontier developed game and a Frontier published game, you can tell the difference with the new Chaos Gate game. I’ve enjoyed 6 hours of that so far, although I think I’m going to restart a bit easier with lessons from the first play through. Oh, the developers have been listening to the player base and actively adjusting the game to the feedback since launch. What’s Chaos Gate ? I think it’s a remake but I didn’t play the original so I have no knowledge there.

It’s been described as an XCom game with Space Marines. You have your 4 high powered super human marines, being sent into missions against followers of Nurgle. That’s the Chaos God for plagues. Nurgle is looking to eat a sector with a plague and your people are recruited by an Inquisitor lady to stop it. Easy to play, really tough to win.

Last thought before today’s closing picture … I mentioned small cars last time. Not got one of those yet although this vintage Escort Mk II rally car is very promising. (Modelsport link) (Tamiya Link).

Nah. This time it’s big cars. I’ll need to make a Decision there in the somewhat near future. What’s next ? Lexus aren’t selling a car I want any more, plus I’ve kinda fallen out of love with their offerings due to the quirkiness and other issues. When the carpocalypse comes around 2030 and petrol cars stop getting made (I honestly don’t think this will happen then), I’ll need to find a petrol car to keep around. That is, unless I move to a place that’s compatible with electric charging or electric car charging becomes actually convenient.

What’s the thinking at the moment ? There are 3 cars on the radar … first is the Ford Puma hybrid. Yep, a return to the cars I used to own quite a bit. Calling the SUV a Puma is a bit of an abomination to this previous owner of the old Puma sports car but it feels like this one is a good balanced car worth checking out.

Second up is the Toyota Corolla 2.0 hybrid. It’s back to a smaller car (the ES300h is way too big) with a good balance between going quick, having space and being frugal. The last one would be going backwards a bit … the blue 2011 Lexus CT I had is quite probably the best car I’ve owned. The build quality was stunningly good, it had bundles of space inside, it just wasn’t as fast as I’d have liked. But if you just go for chilled out motoring, the CT was an incredible car for that. And going used (they stopped importing them to UK a few years ago), you could get a top of the range version with more toys than mine had for an acceptable cost. (Linky)

Time to close up, one more Elite picture … Found this guy on the carrier.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're inside a spaceship, looking at a couch against the wall. 2 people are sitting on the couch, on the right is a fella in a green and grey uniform suit. One the left, is a fella in a blue uniform. He is asleep. There is also a potted plant to the left.
Bosun ! Prepare the airlock

Yep. Totally going out the airlock. Crime – drooling on the upholstery. Sleeping on board is indeed, permitted. We have cabins. Sleeping in front of the command deck door … No. Drooling on the upholstery, you know what’s coming …

😀

Stay safe, be well, don’t drool on upholstery that isn’t yours.

May the Fourth Cup be Earl Gray Hot

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May 4, 2022

10:54 pm

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Hello everyone,

Oops, I blinked and another fortnight went by since the last post. What’s been happening ?

Picture. It's a meme picture of two Ewoks (about 3 foot tall bipedal bears) wearing hoods and a tie. One is holding an open book, the other a picture of a golden bipedal robot. The captions are "Excuse me sir ...." and "Do you have time to talk about our Lord and Saviour C3PO ??"
Not now Goldenrod

No remote control car yet, although I found a different site that seems cheaper, has a wider choice and also gives very clear advice on what’s needed to have a complete thing at the end of it. What’s stopping me ? Firstly, no idea where to put it, I need to rouse myself from eternal tiredness and do a number of jobs around here, not least of which is clearing out some of the clutter.

Oh and also, none of the normal car type models really speaks to me in a “I connect with that model” kind of way. I’m not that interested in the Porsche, Ford GT and Merc models ? Maybe the Toyota Supra, maybe the Miata / MX-5. Here’s a car I was close to going for back in the day :

Picture. A mostly white coupe car with flashes of red and grey paint. It has an aggressive body kit with widened wheels and spoiler wings front and back.
Yep. It’s a Capri

When I was looking to move on from the Astra Mk1 I had, the Ford Capri was one of the cars on the radar. It never happened, partly due to the possibility of finding one. Also because … the Capri was a little bit rubbish and things worked out to put me in the rather spicy and much superior Belmont SRi instead. There’s another bit of Stuff’s Gone Weird here too. I just looked at Autotrader to see what Capri’s are going for now, here’s a link to the cheapest. Yep. That’s a 2 litre Ford Capri going for £12,000. It’s not even one of the good ones ! It does look good though. Crazy things have happened to the classic car market now, there’s been hefty increases in prices happening. Perhaps it’s because all the not so good ones have rusted away and only the excellent and looked after ones are left.

Remote control cars ? Here’s a link to the Zakspeed Capri model page, the model from the picture. That’s Modelsport’s pages and I do like that they give the Bundle things as an option for getting the bits. Without clicking, it would be £222 for car, radio gear, batteries and charger. Not bad and probably a good kit for a learner person.

Time seems to be going whooshing by at the moment doesn’t it ? Perhaps it’s because what we do isn’t being broken up as much as it used to be due to the working from home pattern. Or it might be a much better state at work because what I know is being properly utilised instead of being shunted aside and pretty much ignored. That got grating after a while and it’s been good to have the old knowledge reactivating again. It’s kinda like doors in my mind reopening.

Gaming has been happening too, which might be a reason why the time is whooshing by. The Motorsport Manager campaign was completed tonight. It’s been an epic run going over I think 35 seasons and finishing in game year 2049. The target was to win the championships in all 3 of its single seater, GT and endurance racing. It’s a cracking game, it’s certainly kept me interested and engaged for (uhoh) 1795 gameplay hours since picking it up pretty much on release in November 2016.

There’s another motor racing manager game coming, this time by Frontier. I have my doubts over this one. The genre is horrendously difficult to make a good game for. I’ve previously played Grand Prix Manager 2, GP World and F1 Manager … and bounced off them because they were either annoying (GPM2) or fatally bugged. I can’t even remember what was wrong with the original F1 Manager. One issue with GP World is that campaigns could only last a couple of seasons before inflation made it impossible to run a team, plus it had fatal bugs. Hopefully the Frontier one is a good game, they certainly need to reverse their fortunes after the disasters of Elite Odyssey (still bugged) and Lemnis Gate (meh and ignored). Chaos Gate is looking good on stream, although that’s published by Frontier, not developed by Frontier.

Other gaming ? I just installed Mass Effect again … This is the Remastered version, so it’ll have all sorts of graphical updates, including better lighting so you can see their world better. That’ll be good to play again, although I suspect I may drift away from it during Mass Effect 3. The Mass Effect games tell a terrific story and there’s a wonderful fresh new world to explore during the first two games but … I do like a happy ending and ME3 is anything but that. It’s one reason why I’ll enjoy reading The Expanse novels again, they pulled off an excellent ending there.

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Simulator 2. We're looking at our truck on a 2 lane motorway. The camera is looking from behind and from the right. The truck is green and towing a flatbed that has an orange tracked digger on it. There are tall wind turbines to the left and right of the road which curves gently to the left. In the distance there are blue skies and pretty clouds.
Keep on truckin’

I’m still playing the Truck Game, although the addiction isn’t quite as strong as it was. It’s a good chilled out game when you’re on your own on the road, going from place to place and delivering varied things. Especially with a graphical mod or two installed like improved headlights so you can see more than a little postage stamp of screen when it gets dark. I looked at trying modding to put in a custom paint job, that needs a bit more brain cell activity than I was willing to give though. I’ll attack it again at some point.

Other stuff :

Netflix is gone now. I just wasn’t using the subscription and their output isn’t that interesting any more. It’s part annoyance at them setting up good series like The Expanse and Cowboy Bebop and then letting them go. At least The Expanse got rescued by Prime (need to watch s6) but it’s sad that Bebop was ended early. It was its own story inspired by the anime and was building in a rather promising fashion. It’s a shame Faye wasn’t in more, I liked the live action character more than the anime version and she didn’t really get enough episodes to have fun in.

There’s a few too many streaming services out there now. I haven’t watched any of the new Star Wars stuff, or the various Marvel series. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything there. So that’s Netflix, Disney, Apple and I dunno how many more. It’s a lot … The fear of missing out is quite active. Oh ! Paramount+ coming soon here for Star Trek. I’d very much like to watch Strange New Worlds, the Enterprise crew that was in Discovery season 2 was excellent, especially Anson Mount being a very charismatic and commanding Captain Pike.

But I’m not wanting to sign up to a I dunno how much a month service just to watch one series.

Oh ! Getting late. Time to get the Tashnarr Chaos Gate stream centre stage again and I left A Bad Deal For The Whole Galaxy at a rather delicate cliff hanger yesterday.

Be well everyone !

Late Easter

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April 22, 2022

10:57 pm

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Hello everyone, a belated Happy Easter to you all. Gosh it’s been a while again. I have had a few ideas simmering on the brain for a post but the “New Post” button wasn’t getting pressed to initiate them … However, one thing I did manage to do was break the sketch block that had been going for about 18 months …

Picture. A rough sketch of a dwagon. He's standing with his feet pointing to his right (our left) in black strokes intended to be shoes. His right paw is raised above his head, his left paw is on his hip. He is winking his left eye.
Friday? Night Fever ?

I probably gave away the muse but hopefully you recognise the pose from the movie. The inspiration was Knightenator, who I just recently started watching on Twitch (link) after she was raided again by the ever lovely Tashnarr (link). Raiding is where a stream takes their viewers over to another streamer when the time comes to shut down their stream and it’s fantastic for discoverability of streamers similar to who you were watching. It gives you an immediate suggestion for “If you like me then you should like this person too who is continuing after I go offline”.

Hmm. This could be a randomised post. I can see it coming :-). Knight was on earlier playing more multiplayer Apex Legends (not something I play but she makes it curious to watch) and is another one who indulges in the Truck Game, European Truck Simulator 2. I’ve been enjoying that game a lot although I think I might take a break from it for a bit because they’ve tweaked the AI and made them pretty dangerous (which has been annoying me).

So … what have I been up to ? The post ideas in my head are things like : Truck Game and how it relates to modern day logistics. You know, things like when you click the button to order something online, what’s involved in getting it to your door. Or to the shop you get the thing from. That’ll be for a later post I think. I think I’m due a music post at some point too. I was in Cardiff on Wednesday and picked up some more cd’s, 3 from Morcheeba, 1 from Enya, a Nerina Pallot cd and something speculative from Beverley Craven. Haven’t listened to them yet, I’ll weave the new tracks in between the other music I listen to and gradually figure out what I think of them like that. And then I’ll weave in the whole album along the way too.

I had this week off work, which has allowed for :

A bit too much Truck Game time;

Indulging in Skyrim again. I have a heavily modded playthrough going …

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking at the back of our heroine. She's wearing heavy iron armour and is on a ledge looking down at a valley filled with thin tall trees.
A snowy view

It still looks good, it’s an easy game to play and the ease of modding it enhances it even more. That’s a curious one though, it’s an easy one to lose yourself in because they’ve buried stuff to find everywhere and the gameplay style I prefer of a big sword and heavy armour means I’m not having to think too much about hitting things.

The Motorsport Manager campaign continues and still provides interesting racing. As in, the team is winning races now but I’m having to work hard to get the wins or we’re getting advantage from being able to handle changeable weather better than the AI.

And a trip to Cardiff happened on Wednesday.

Picture. We're looking over a balcony with a golden railing at a clock in a steeple. It's in a wooden building above a row of market stalls underneath. There are more shops on a far balcony over to the other side.
Lunch with a different view

That’s the indoor market area in Cardiff and I discovered a bacon sandwich shop and a cd shop next door to it. One pondering after though is, places like the cd shop and the book shop don’t seem to change their offerings too much … I haven’t registered too much change to that Picture Of How Things Are in the book shop lately. How often do they get new stuff in ? A curiosity …

I’m mostly going to wrap up there though but one thing I did want to think out loud on was remote control cars again. I didn’t get one on Wednesday because homing instinct was kicking in (apparently I tweaked my knee again and couldn’t feel the pain from it yet) and I don’t like to make money decisions when my head’s not right. When I do get one, I want to make sure I get all the right things … What’s needed ?

Picture. We're looking at a remote control car. It has two thing wheels at the front and we see one (of two) wheels at the back, with a spiked rubber tyre. The shell is white plastic with stickers above a black plastic tub.
Ah ! Grasshopper

So – things you need include : The Car ! Batteries. These come in packs of 6 in a moulded casing. It takes about 15 minutes to fast charge (which you don’t want to do too much due to damage) and they give about 15 minutes run time. So you want two battery packs. You want AA batteries for the receiver and transmitter. The remote control part is a 2.4GHz pair. You need a motor, a speed controller and a servo for the steering. Oh and you probably want a toolkit if what you have isn’t up to what you want.

One thing I’m confused about is what’s actually in the box … The couple I have my eye on are the racing car style Porsche 911 kit (link) and the more buggy style 4 wheel drive Thunder Dragon (link). Yep. Dragon pulled it out of the pack. They’re both Tamiya kits. You can get “Ready to Race” kits as well which are fully assembled but I’d want to put it together so I can understand how all of the parts work together.

Both kits take the standard 7.2V battery module, both have a motor (RS540 is a standard size for pretty much all electric remote control cars) but whereas the buggy has a speed controller, the Porsche kit doesn’t.

Antics supply a collected kit for most of the bits : Carson 2.4GHz radio and receiver. That’s got the transmitter and receiver pair, a battery pack for the car, AA batteries, a servo that does the steering and a trickle charger for the battery pack. The Porsche would need a speed controller as well. Which might mean a different type of motor as well … Choices :-D.

Motors ? There’s lots of different types that run on different types of power. The ones that go in your vacuum cleaner or mower will be Alternating Current (AC) Induction motors. They rely on the waveform of mains power to work. It’s a wiggly (sine wave) waveform and the motor rotor (the bit that spins) basically follows the electromagnetic field in the stator (the shell) windings that have the power. These motors just keep going because there are very few contact points outside of the bearings that hold the rotor where it should be.

Direct Current (DC) motors that run off batteries can’t do that. Instead of the power waveform being wiggly, it’s a straight line of constant voltage. A brushed motor has contact points that connect the electricity to the spinning part. As the motor spins, the connection swaps over and the motor keeps turning. However, the brushes wear out over time and need to be cleaned and ultimately replaced to keep the motor working. Brushless motors are kind of a mix between DC motors and AC Induction motors, they rely on a speed controller to turn the power on and off at specific points in the rotation of the motor. (Is too complex to describe here but was probably inspired by how 4 stroke combustion engines work)

The speed controllers work by chopping up the power going to the motor. If the power is only turned on for 10% of the cycle, the car being driven by the motor goes slower. The brushless speed controllers apply the power so that the rotor follows the electromagnetic field.

Oops. Digression and nerdiness happened … Bits list ! I did say I’d be thinking aloud … If I was to go for the Porsche, the bill from Antics would be :

The car – £129.

Carson Reflex pro radio kit, 7.2V battery, charger, servo – £80

Etronix ET0103 electronic speed controller – £20

(A brushless motor and controller starts around £80)

Extra 7.2V 5300mAh battery – £35

Fast charger Perkins GTP0166 – £28

Mini toolkit for £20.

So … that all works out to £312 to get in to the hobby and that’s going cheap on a few items. One thing I have already is the boost starter for the car. That has a 12V car battery in it that can also do 240V mains power so it can feed the charger.

It’s a fair bit to get in there isn’t it ? One thing I’m very conscious of is there’s a big gap between what I currently know and what the magazines assume that you know. And the only way to bridge that gap is by diving in. Although i have just looked at the Ready to Go cars and there’s a buggy car for £125 which includes the radio kit. Maybe it’s all what you pay for again, like that extra battery is 4 times the capacity of the one in the £125 kit.

We’ll see. I think that’s enough thinking aloud for now. Book time ! I enjoyed reading Light Chaser by Gareth L Powell and Peter F Hamilton. A bit short again maybe but there’s a lot to be said for a story that gets in, tells its thing and gets out again fast instead of indulging in repetition of what you already read or having a promising beginning that dribbles out into a tame end. Worth the cash and well worth a read.

Good night everyone, I must post more !

Been Truckin’

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March 19, 2022

9:54 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again ! I really must get back into the habit of posting reasonably regularly again. I may have been diving into some game addictions again … Oh and cricket’s been on (it hasn’t been great to be honest) and I’ve been diving into the work stuff.

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking up at our character. She's pretty much just a silhouette against a sky which has orange aurorae fading to yellow and green. There is also a ribbon of stars to the top right. We can see a few tree tops as well.
Head in the skies ?

Yep. The new Skyrim save happened and I’ve been collecting mods again. I’ll never share the full collection of mods (most modded Skyrim installs will have a LOT of mods) but some of the big ones are Caliente’s Beautiful Bodies Enhancer which makes everyone prettier. Apachii Sky Hair adds great hair styles. There’s a map enhancer, some quality of life type things like the achievement re-enabler and a thing that tells you what books you haven’t read yet. Realistic water, weather and better road signs amongst other texture improvements.

There’s a Death Alternative mod in there which changes what happens when your character is defeated. Normally, you just reload a save. But with mods like Death Alternative Your Money Or Your Life, things happen like being ransomed off, robbed, left for dead and other things that you can actually recover from. Sounds odd doesn’t it ? But it does let you recover from a situation without the reload and another mod sets up having to rescue the people who were with you which gives a reason to explore more. Oh and there’s an Alternate Perspective thing, which alters the cliched start.

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking at the back left of our character. She's wearing an orange dress top above a light green skirt. Behind, is a medieval city type scene with stone brick buildings to left and right. A sign to the top left says "Winking Skeever"
Solitude in Solitude

In my case, I started my character as someone stepping off a boat at the Solitude docks and we’ll see where it goes from there. You can even go into the main story if you choose to. What adventures will she have ? She’s already in the garb of one who likes to hit things with a big sword. I haven’t got the mod set complete yet though. Seems like most of the time I spend in Skyrim isn’t so much the adventuring, it’s checking whether mods do what they’re supposed to do and sorting out incompatibilities.

It’s a game I’ll keep coming back to. It’s very easy to play, they’ve scattered interesting things to do all over the rather extensive map and the mods just add more to that. Oh and I’m being very curious about Elden Ring as well because a lot of people are really enjoying that. It’s another open world adventuring while bashing things with pointy things game.

There hasn’t been much Elite lately. To be honest, it’s an extremely pretty game but the hold there isn’t as much as it was. I do enjoy the space trucking though, which brings me to …

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Sim 2. We'd looking down on a truck from directly behind. There is a "Euro Goodies" logo on the back doors on a mostly white truck. We're on a suspension bridge and can see the chains to the left and right. It's a sunny day, showing greenery on hills in the distance.
Don’t mind me, being on the hard shoulder

Since acquiring another gamepad controller, I’ve been enjoying the driving games again. Forza Horizon 5 is one, I’m a bit relieved that I got that on Game Pass instead of shelling out the £50 for it. It can be a hugely fun game … but it also has a lot of annoyance and shallowness to it. I think I’m getting bored with what it wants you to do already. Fun while it lasted but shortlived fun. The screenshot above is from Euro Truck Simulator 2 which I’m being very happily addicted to. Just one more run … honest. Oh and it’s also from the early days where I was getting used to the actual driving on a controller.

I do like games that have a story unfold as you play them. The story this time is starting as a journeyman driver who does jobs in other people’s trucks. After a while, you earn enough to buy your own truck …

Game screenshot. ETS2. We're sitting in a left hand drive truck, looking left our of the driver's window. We're currently going over a bridge and we can see a wide river channel stretch out into the distance.
Pretty river

Not actually my truck. I couldn’t resist taking that screenshot though. The map is very extensive, potentially covering all of Europe. I started off in Cardiff but the character hasn’t been back there for a while. As you do more runs, you get more experience which lets you carry more varied cargo and go longer distances.

It’s been compelling so far and I’ve enjoyed going from place to place across Europe. I said “potentially”, because a decent amount of the map is hidden behind expansion downloadable content which you have to pay for. So that’s half of France, all of Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, part of Turkey, Scandinavia and other parts of Eastern Europe. There’s a huge map there and I’m invested enough so far that when the game goes on sale again, I’ll buy more of the DLC and roam to more places.

Oh and this is perhaps going too much into the geeky but you can link up your game to a World of Trucks service and have your progress logged and jobs given via there. Here’s my link and I’ll pop it in the links to the right as well.

That’s the thing. There’s games that you enjoy for a few hours, there’s games you can get really invested in. There’s games that transport you to somewhere else for a while. Games that have a story open up as you play them. I like the story games, whether that’s a finite scripted story like Horizon Zero Dawn (must go back to that), the building up of the Sleepy Star Fleet in Elite or starting from nothing and building up a trucking company. Or being a tough lady with a sword sorting out the bad people in Skyrim.

Tonight though, it’s watching the ever lovely Tashnarr in another story game, Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve played that a bit … but I kinda bounce off the massive multiplayer game playstyle now. It’s fun watching though. Especially if you have a good book to dive in to as well.

Time for the Armageddon Inheritance !

Boats, Worry, Wind, Break, Monster

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February 27, 2022

8:50 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve been a bit quiet – it’s a worrying time at the moment. I’ve been on a break from work this week, I usually struggle to go straight through from Xmas to Easter without a little time off and this week felt convenient. Especially with a boat show on at the NEC last weekend. I figured I could go on the Friday …

Picture. We're looking at a rain soaked tarmac path going directly ahead of us. Either side is a drenched grassy area with occasional trees.
Bit nautical …

However … Worry part 1 was the big storms that happened last weekend. I’d originally planned to go to see boats on the Friday and I’d have been travelling at Peak Storm Time. So I chose life and went on Saturday instead. It was a good day out. I didn’t see much damage from wind to be honest, although the worst of it was to the South West of where I am and I was heading North. One of the Severn Bridge crossings was closed again though and I suspect that Avonmouth Bridge would have been pretty nasty too. I left the motorway early again on the way back, the last little bit is pretty exposed and can catch the wind. Boats ?

Picture. We're looking at a black and dark blue barge from its left hand side. There is a queue of people waiting to go on there. The entrance is at the back, with a set of stairs going up to a canvas roof.
It’s a big one

It’s a big one isn’t it ? That’s a widebeam barge, I think it was a 72ft boat. Note the flat bottom. This one is a river cruising widebeam barge suitable for living on. The inside looked nice but to be honest, I really dislike that colour combination. I had a walk through a narrowbeam barge as well, it was really cramped.

Picture. We're looking into a narrowbeam barge. There is red painted wood forming the door and roof above. The wood inside is pale pine type wood. Inside the boat there is a cooker to the left and a sink to the right. Two people give a sense of scale. The gap between the two worktops is about the size of one person.
A tight fit ?

I don’t think I could live on that. It was very cramped. There are narrower barges than others though. That seemed extraordinarily tight … Of the two though, I liked the colour of the narrowbeam with the red setting off its green pretty well. I didn’t like the colour of the dark blue one. That didn’t work for me. What colour would I want on a barge ? I think a green shade with wooden trim. That would work well. There’s something about a rich well varnished shiny wood finish. White is a good colour for them as well but I’d be wary about how grimy those would get.

Picture. We're looking at a small wooden motorboat on top of a stand. It has a small cuddly bear in the pilot area. He's wearing goggles and a flying hat.
Bear ! On a boat !

I hope he packed his essentials.

It was good heading out to see the boats. A decent amount to see, although I’d exhausted it fairly quickly (About 3/4 of a Hall of the NEC) and the homing signal was kicking in again to get me away from that amount of People.

The wind came back on the Sunday and I think it may actually have been worse than on the Friday. I spent most of my Friday afternoon being another person watching the Big Jet TV guy. That was good. And scary at the same time as the wind was demonstrating its power over our feeble constructions that we send into the skies. It reminded me of what was happening when I was coming back from Canada, where I think my plane had to do a crabbed landing. There was definite sense of the plane having to do that reorientation to straight as it landed.

I could actually try flying planes again … I’ve signed up for Game Pass. Mostly for Forza Horizon 5 …

Game screenshot. Forza Horizon 5. We're looking down a road that's gently curving to the left. Our car is a silver sports car, there is a black sports car a little up the road. One the right is a desert type landscape dotted heavily with greenery. A huge dust storm threatens at the horizon.
Do you feel the need for speed ?

Well. Maybe not Need For Speed, although I did enjoy playing Need For Speed 3 Hot Pursuit in its 1998 incarnation. That was a very fun arcade driving game. It was early days in Forza H 5 for me but it was gratifying when it suggested Extreme (pretty) graphics settings for me and great when the system had good frame rates with that. I should go back to it. I’m playing on a cheap controller which might actually hit that “cheap is more expensive” thing because I’m either going to take it apart to modify or replace it already with something better.

How come ? It’s a console style controller with the analogue sticks, with the value of 100% coming at maybe 50% of travel. That’s making the driving particularly difficult. Forza was well behaved but the Automation cars weren’t … Talking of that,

Game screenshot. BeamNG Drive. We're looking at a monster truck parked on top of a slightly banked concrete area. It's green with big black wheels. The front grille is triangles facing each other like teeth. It has two spotlights in front of the cab like eyes and red triangles attempting to look like spines.
Gets you anywhere, if you can climb in

Conedodger’s Automation build off challenge this week was Monster Trucks. It was the first I’ve joined in on and that truck above is the result of 11 hours in Automation and about 3 hours in BeamNG.Drive. (Automation is an early access game that lets you build custom cars, BeamNG Drive imports what you make and lets you drive them in a full physics simulation). People seemed to like what I’d put together and Mr Cone seemed to enjoy driving it round the Monster Truck arena built to test them all out. Not the best, not the worst. Happy with how it came out. It drove well around the test track above but it (and the other trucks) tended to explode when landing on jumps. It made for a hilarious stream. And then there’s Truckball (twitch clip link)

I think I need to hit post now though (and my shoulder is approaching pain point). I do intend to post more often. Bit worried about the world at the moment and it’s affecting the want to share anything at the moment.

One thing I have noticed though – since changing job my mental state seems to be recovering to the point where the daft creative ideas are coming out again. Which is really good. I’m looking forwards to being more involved again going forwards. But enough about work :-D. I’d like to get back to the drawing again. It was good creating a couple of memes for the Tashnarr/Sheepy 40k layers miniature painting show which had a special episode with KatiePetersPlays on Friday. People seemed to love them but I think it used up all my brain wanted to give on Friday. (Not posting them here, ask if wanting to see them)

Time to hit post. Stay safe everyone, be well, hopefully the world sorts itself out soon.

Browser, Moon, Horizon, Film

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February 6, 2022

8:51 pm

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Hello everyone,

Missed posting again ! I must post more regularly again. At least I’m able to post on the main browser again. I’ll get to that in a bit. But first … Been checking out a sale acquired game. It’s pretty.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. Our heroine is standing on a hill, looking towards the lower left. Behind her is a fog filled valley with a scattering of thin, tall trees plus a couple of wooden tower buildings. In the background, there are mountains. Our character Aloy, is in the foreground. She has braided ginger hair and is an athletic built lady wearing light leather garb and boots.
Hey ! Horizon’s over there

The game is Horizon Zero Dawn and while it came out on console in 2017, it came to PC in 2020. It’s pretty demanding on the graphics too, so I had my eye on it partly from acquiring something super pretty to see what the graphics card could do but also because it’s got a renowned story. It’s one of the best games of its type in the 2010s. The graphics do help there but graphics aren’t everything. Where it really scores is the story, the world they’ve built and how that fits into the story and just how everything in the game works. I’m in the early days so far but something I was really enjoying was even just how the foliage reacts to your presence.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. We're looking out towards a grassy area sloping up to the left. On the left, there are a series of light orange coloured rocks. We can just see Aloy's head lurking in a patch of long grass with red leaves, at the bottom of the shot. In the distance are the tall thin trees and we can see a two legged mechanical beastie a little way down the road.
The Whistle Bush Awaits

So without giving too much away, we’re in an environment that feels a lot like Earth but there are no buildings or signs of our current civilisation. At least that we can see on the surface. Our heroine, Aloy, starts off as a child in the care of a fellow called Rost. They’re both outcasts for (redacted story reasons) and the child phase gives a chance for the game to pass on a few of its gameplay systems. There’s one there up on screen, where there are a series of faint purple triangles that show where the robot’s going to go.

Yep. Game has robots. They start small, resembling predator animals but they’ll get a tad bigger too as the game goes on.

I’m not too far in to the game, I’m barely past the prologue. But I have been taken by what they’ve built here. The terrain feels crafted, in a way that procedural generation cannot do. Even Skyrim, which is a crafted world too, shows signs where they’ve been needing to cheat with terrain textures that repeat in a pattern you can easily see. I haven’t seen that so much in Horizon Zero Dawn, it feels very real. Oh and that foliage will move with you as you pass through it. It’s a stealth action game, so hiding in those red leafed bushes can let you entice over an unsuspecting enemy or mechanical beastie so you can quietly stab them with the big spear.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy sits with back to camera at the bottom left. On the right is a platform made of wooden logs tied together. There are three slim ladies in assorted tan leather garb standing on the platform. One is arching her self backwards with both hands in the air. The platform is in front of a building built from more wooden logs.
Party time !

I was really enjoying this little celebration, with the three ladies on the stage there singing away in something traditional. These are the Nora and they call their warriors Braves, so you can probably guess that the world borrows a lot from Native American culture. And I was loving it in the bits of the game I’ve gotten to so far. The animation of the world is top notch. From the foliage, to the people having a little dance, to the main character reacting to your inputs.

I should say though that I’m running this gorgeous game on a Ryzen 5 3600 machine with 32GB and through a 3060Ti graphics card. That’s Meltdown and it’s turned into a machine that can handle everything it gets given now. It’s a pretty powerful machine, especially in these days of not being able to get hardware due to the shortages that are going on. I was very lucky to get the 3060Ti card when I did, it was literally an offer available for 10 minutes before they were all gone.

Other stuff ? I was actually in work again a couple of times … Once was to rescue the stuff from the locker. The second was to meet the team I’ve been in for a few months now. They’re a good bunch. As per tradition for here, I’m not going to be mentioning the work too much though.

Browser – I’m typing this on a new browser, having had to change because the Waterfox classic was getting too annoying and limited. So I’m on the better Waterfox now that is actually supported. It got to the point where Classic wasn’t allowing me to edit here, didn’t support Netflix, was critically slow in Twitter … etc.

Thursday’s work at work day also gave the excuse to head over to the Mall after, so of course cd’s happened. They’re : Morcheeba’s Blackest Blue, Taylor Swift’s Folklore and a double concert cd from Jean-Michel Jarre.

I’ve also picked up albums from Metric, check out Gold Guns Girls. They got Energy. I’m way overdue a music post so that’s going to happen at some point too. Need to get the Ting Tings latest too, I’m missing an album that they only released on a limited circulation for some reason. The Ting Tings have Energy too.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. It's dark and we're looking up at the sky from boot level on our heroine, Aloy. She's looking off to the right of shot. We can see the top of a broad branched tree to the left. Left half of the sky is cloudy, with a full moon. Right side is clear and we can see the stars. Everything is a tint of green.
Horizon Zero Moon ?

Yep. Game is pretty. I watched another film on Friday at my favoured (empty) local cinema. It was Moonfall. What can I say about Moonfall ? The visuals are done incredibly well. As in, stunning, epic cinematography. The story though … oh dear. Ouch. It’s so bad, it’s actually pretty bad.

The premise is that people on Earth have suddenly discovered that the Moon is dropping out of orbit, with dire consequences for everyone on Earth. There’s not much science in its fiction, which is most of the problem with the movie. There’s a lot of set pieces stitched together with the barest minimum of science to back them up.

I still somewhat enjoyed watching it … but the story is mockbuster quality with top standard visual effects.

One comment on it though – it’s got me wondering about doing a re-read of David Weber’s Dahak series of books. It felt like one of the core premises of Moonfall may have been inspired by what goes on in Mutineer’s Moon and the Armageddon Inheritance in that the Moon may not actually be a big ball of rock …

Anyone else feel like time is zipping along at the moment ? Like you realise that several days have whooshed by without you really registering them ? I have that. I think that’s one contributor to me not posting so much here lately. I need to get some build pics transferring from the phone camera into the PCs so I can post those. Oh and music posts, I’ve still been steadily picking up new stuff.

I think that’s it for me now though. 2 streams on, music on and Olympics to enjoy at some point. And more reading, I’ve been away from the Expanse finale for a little while now.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

New Year’s Here

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January 4, 2022

11:05 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a good break … Back to work tomorrow but it’s been a good time away. I have to admit, I haven’t been getting out much outside of visiting family. There’s been a lot of indoor time happening. I’ll talk more about what that’s been in a bit. (I’m ok, just avoiding the outside world !)

So, what’s been happening … Thumbnail first.

Photo. We see the heads of two dogs (the rest is hidden behind them). One dog is white haired with ears pricked behind her head, the other dog is golden haired with a whitening muzzle. His ears are resting downwards.
Hello, We Are The Bacon Sandwich Inspection Patrol

That’s Icey and Murph again, being very attentive. Yep, was off to the mum’s and sister’s places this holiday. Mum’s first, then sister’s place for Xmas day. I last saw my mum last Xmas as part of the support bubbles we were allowed to have. This year is rather more open (I’ll rant on that in a bit). It was a good little visit. I hadn’t seen the sister, the dogs or the D boys for a couple of years now. Xmas 2020 even. Murph is still the sweetie that he’s always been, perhaps a little too slurpy still :-D. That’s not a bad thing in a dog. I do seem to get a lot of attention from them both. I wonder why that is.

Icey’s improved a hell of a lot. They’ve done a lot of good work helping her be more relaxed around people she doesn’t encounter much, even accepting (and maybe encouraging) random pats. She’s actually more accepting of some of those than Ben the Staffy was. Ben was a little ball of love but he’d shy away and leg it if you tried to reach over his head to give him scritches. Almost as if he thought you were going to poke him in the eye. Icey was fine with that.

Oh and there was very definitely an ulterior motive behind the attention in the picture above …

Photo. Murph the golden lab dog is sitting and giving paw to my mum who is just out of shot to the right. Icey is sitting in the doorway looking away from us into the kitchen. In the foreground, the real subject of Murph's attention ... a bacon sandwich.
If I is Good Boi Can I Haz Bacon ?

Yep. It was breakfast time. They did get a little bit of that sandwich. A definite case of inhalation and the bacon not touching the sides. We haven’t been doing presents for a few years now but I did take something away with me :

Photo. Our red fluffy dragon is mostly in shot to the right. To the left, a flat pack consisting of wooden sheets. We can see the front page, which is mostly green with a wooden owl model printed on it.
Owl Be Assembling That Later

I’ve got a couple of model assembly posts to bring you all now. I’ve been slipping on that. The owl came together fairly well and is now inhabiting a perch on top of my book cases. May need to acquire some wood glue though.

Yep. Good trip away, actually one of the first times I’ve had a chance to play properly with the latest car too. It is rather too big, but that doesn’t get in the way of it being a nicely handling car outside of where the road surface is a bit broken up. That confuses the traction control and other driver aids built in.

I’ll get something different next time though. I haven’t been enjoying manoeuvring such a big car around car parks and it would be good to get back to hatchbacks instead of the booted saloons. Trouble is, Lexus aren’t currently making a suitable car available in the UK. The IS and CT’s have both been discontinued and they’ve pinned their banner to SUVs. I’m not interested in owning an SUV. (Although the NX that the sister has is a perfect fit for their different requirements).

It is curious looking back into that world, where I know very little about the cars available on the market. Toyota’s 2 litre Corolla hybrid looks absolutely ideal, with enough speed and practicality. I’ll have to take a peek next time I’m around one of their garages. (Service due around March). I would like to know what else is out there though. I have been enjoying driving the hybrids and the effortless nature of their electric drive. It makes for pretty impressive acceleration too when you ask it to go fast in an overtaking move.

Been thinking about getting back into the racing games too, although I haven’t pressed the button on buying one yet. The closest I have is American Truck Simulator (courtesy of Humble Bundle a while ago). I acquired a controller not long ago, with one of the things putting me off trying the racing games being the set up needed to get my racing wheel back in commission again. (Heavy desk clearance). Thinking about that though, I need to do some desk clearance anyway because a combination of a high monitor and a chair that (needs replacing) is too low is leading to neck ache.

Things I’ve been playing on the time off :

Idle Champions – a bit too much of this. It’s an idler game, where you set up the adventuring party and they’ll battle against increasing waves of enemies. There’s a bit of story in there too, which is usually amusing. Oh and there’s a little group of us on EnterElysium’s discord server who have gotten each other addicted to the game.

Motorsport Manager – it’s gotten interesting again because I accepted the promotion for the team and getting good results has become a challenge instead of a Press Fast Forward Until Win. I wonder how long it will be until the team is the front runner again and the long running challenge of winning all three racing types comes to a finish.

Solasta – is a computer role playing game based on the 5th edition D&D rules set.

Game screenshot. Solasta. We're in a wooded landscape with our heroes standing on copper coloured rock. From left to right we have a dark skinned pointy eared fellow in scale mail. Then a lady wizard in a white top and long dark blue skirt. Then it's a light skinned lady in half plate mail with light green cloth cape covering. On the right is a short dark skinned rogueish looking fellow.
Heroes, fresh out of the wrapper

That’s the group I’ve restarted the game with. From left to right, we have ranger, wizard, cleric and rogue. It’s a decent mix, although it’s curious seeing some of the restrictions come in to play. The cleric has the biggest restriction. She’s supposed to be up front taking the hits … but has a choice between using a shield and being able to cast spells. She can’t do both. The ranger can poke things with swords or shoot from range with a bow. The wizard stands back and casts spells at everything and the halfling rogue is there to do damage where he can and to pick all of the locks and defuse all of the traps. It’s been a curious start to the game, I’ll have to look into the campaign some more. That said, the first attempt was a false start because I put a druid in there instead of the ranger and it felt like he wasn’t achieving very much.

Trans Road USA had my attention day – this is a company game, where you’re running a haulage company. The aim is to build a firm of truckers spanning the USA. Could be a good one to relax to, although I am nursing a sore neck now after losing some time to it today.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided – I do enjoy these games and the world they’re set in. Especially meeting Entity again. This run has reached Prague 2, where the sun has set into the night time period. I’ll pick up the last remaining main game achievement in this run, although I’ll make a save before because that achievement is incompatible with my preferred ending where you save everyone.

A little Plague Inc has happened too … it’s a curious catharsis that game and very easy to play.

Talking of plague …. the reason I haven’t been out at all (1 shopping run and alarm clock buy – lost mine) is plague … I’m in the thought space now of if I don’t have to be out and about amongst all of the new cases that are happening, I’ll stay in. It’s an incredible number of cases at the moment in the UK, yet no restrictions on movement have been announced. What I would like to have done is to do a run over to Cardiff (getting closer to remote control car acquisition) for Lego shop, sweet shop, book cave and general wander. There’s a couple of interesting films out there at the moment too. The quiet Showcase is still quiet and worth a shot. Maybe Friday, pending work :-D.

Yeah, too much going on out there in the world at the moment. I need to get a couple of small dents in the car looked at too.

But for now, Fuzzy’s streaming, I’ve posted enough and I’m going to head back into reading more of Leviathan Falls. That’s the 9th book in The Expanse series. I was worried before starting about whether they’d be able to wrap it all up neatly but their traditional prologue start kicked it all off in the right direction. Looking forward to finishing it in the next week.

That’s it for now though. It was a good break, lots of time off. Visiting great people, indulging in steam sales acquisitions … Like Beam.NG Drive, which takes cars from the game Automation and makes them driveable.

Stay safe everyone, be well and if you do need to be out and about among People, be wiser than our politicians are being at the moment …

Happy Holiday Everyone !

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December 22, 2021

9:29 pm

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Hi there,

It’s been a while again. I usually aim for a target of 100 posts a year and the advent posts of recent years have vastly helped out with that goal. It’s been another rough seeming year though and I think I’ve been heavily burnt out by what’s happening in the outside world and also what’s been happening at work over this past year.

I’ve been able to change the work thing but the outside world situation isn’t going away any time soon, mostly due to People. It would be good to get outside in the world again, amongst friends and to do things that have been held off on for far too long. But with things occurring like Omicron, I really don’t know who to trust. I certainly don’t trust the people who have started knocking on the door asking for money for services, without a mask on. They’re going round the neighbourhood doing that, talking to all the people, in proximity, how do they know that they haven’t picked up the latest nasty ?

Nope. If they can’t offer that small show, then it’s an automatic sending away. But that’s me getting into ranting again … I had deliveries yesterday and the other day … Today it was :

Picture. My Pocket Dragon with "Feed Me" on an apron is standing next to a sackcloth style white bag with a drawstring top. The bag has the words "Naked Marshmallow Co. Sack of Coal. Cookies and Cream Marshmallow. On The Naughty List."
Naughty and nice ?

Inside there are cookies and cream marshmallows, with a special black as coal coating. I haven’t opened the sealed bag that they’re in yet (more marshmallows arrived and I’m in the salted caramel ones) but I can report fluffiness inside the bag and they don’t photograph well against that black chair.

They’ve closed their doors for a Xmas break now but I’d highly recommend Naked Marshmallow Co (not sponsored). They make tasty things, they also have a toasty thingy which is something that would give health and safety people a nightmare or two. The other delivery is for something that is around my age …

Picture. A pocket dragon is standing in front of a large orange hard back book with a white header. It's titled "Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual."
Life on Mars ?

This was one of those random things I saw advertised and I was a huge fan of the setting that the series Space 1999 was in, I couldn’t resist this one. (Setting was incredible, the scripts were awful). This is an extensive technical manual with descriptions of the moon base, the ships, the technology, the people. I’m 74 pages in, which is most of the bit about the base and I’ve been loving that so far. Next section is about the ships. It’s from the Gerry Anderson store … but I’m not going to provide a link there because their marketing emails are a bit too incessant.

There was also an event a couple of weeks ago now …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A motley selection of spaceships (I think there's just over 40) of all sizes and colours can be seen. We're looking at the fleet from the front. Over to the right is a blazing orange sun.
Assemble the Fleet !

That was the Drew Wagar farewell to Elite event and it could well be the last time a lot of those pilots appear in the game. I might not go back in either (having bought X4 and wanting to check that one out). It’s not so much a matter of being mad about what they’ve done to the game, it’s more like severe disappointment.

We’re all looking for a great space game … but what they did in April was to give us a really poor first person shooter style thing tacked on to the space stuff. They broke some of the space stuff along the way, the big thing for me was them breaking the lighting and to some extent, the different possibilities we had for finding varied and interesting places to land in. Places seemed all the same after the expansion, with the light either being washed out white or just invisible in black. But the worst aspect is that screenshot above needed to be done in the old version of the game, the expansion still hasn’t been rolled out to consoles and the player base is split between those who log in to the Odyssey expansion not being able to instance and fly together with the pilots who are still on what’s now the base game.

So all in all, the experience became a bit meh and it came time to look to different things. Like setting up an interstellar pizza delivery service in X4. You can’t do that in Elite, even with a fleet that reached 47 ships, I can only control or use one at a time. Whatever you do in the game just doesn’t matter. In Eve, you can set up a spaceship manufacturing base … indeed most of the Eve ships are player built. Player interaction matters. In Elite, it just spawns it in when you buy or deletes it when you sell. Doesn’t feel right. In X4, you can hire pilots who then use your ships to mine, trade, escort or other things.

I do need to be a bit better physically though before really diving in to X4. I remember having issues last year as well, where I had an extended time away from Elite again. Currently it’s build up of damage in my shoulder, which has got fairly sure. The Idle Champions game hasn’t helped there …

Game screenshot. Idle Champions. The main part of the screen is a hallway. A total of 10 people are on the left, with a single creature and a few piles of gold on the right. At the bottom, we see 10 portraits for the characters and on top the headers are for damage and gold totals, with top right showing where we are.
Festively idle ?

Idle Champions is an idling game … where you have the game going in a window and it pretty much does its own thing while you’re doing other things. So it’s been active for a considerable amount of time since I went back into it last week. The longer it’s active, the more monsters are mown down by your people and all of the monsters drop gold. The gold goes to upgrades for your characters. The characters have a variety of equipment as well which helps in various ways. My latest character is Shandie, in a festive outfit in the centre of the formation. She’s all about speeding up the game so you get to the objectives quicker.

The game is built up around stories which have chapters of 50 areas at a time and when you’ve completed a chapter, you can go through again in free play or a number of variants which add conditions like faster monsters, less champions or randomised events. It’s curious for me due to the theorycrafting that goes into where everyone is in the formations you select plus I want to see the stories. Oh and when the chapter of 50 areas is complete, the characters go back to the start and do it again with monsters that are harder to mow down. When you hit the “complete” button and reset, the gold earned goes towards a Favour score, with that determining how fast you get gold in the next runs.

It’s a curious and odd game. It’s also free, although you can buy power by spending money on crates with them. You could get the same items by playing the game for a (very very) long time too. Anyway, the theorycrafting aspect has drawn me in again. The formation above is a bit of a mess but there’s a lot of room for picking different champions that work with each other for synergies.

Anyway, been in that one a bit too much over the last week.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. We're in the city, with buildings to the right and building over an arch in the background. A tree with protective concrete bollards is to the left. A police car with lights flashing it to the right. Two more trees with orange leaves are in the background. A police van is under the archway.
Just another day in Future Prague

I started up another Deus Ex Mankind Divided run, just before the Idle Champions addiction hit again. It’s a good game, it would be great to see a third title with the protagonist Adam Jensen. It feels like they left it with a bit of unfinished business that could do with closing out.

I think that’s it for me for tonight though. Have a great winter break everyone, hopefully you get to see people, stay well, have lots of food, relax and come back in the new year stronger and happier.

Stay safe, be well.

PS Addon – had my booster jab. Hurrah ! It took a couple of days for a headache to go away afterwards but that could have been headaches I’ve been having anyway (don’t think my two pairs of glasses are fully aligned). Get your booster if you can !

Where was I again ?

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November 3, 2021

9:09 pm

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Been meaning to post for a bit 🙂 Subjects have been escaping my head though :-D.

I do enjoy talking about the computer games but it does feel sometimes like it’s a one track thing for here and I do like the variation. I haven’t done a music post for a good long while, so that’s due as well. I’ll go on to the cricket world cup, which I’ve been enjoying having on in the background or time delayed for after I close the work laptop down.

Cartoon picture. A T-Rex dinosaur is stretching their little arms towards a big red button on the wall. A sign above says "Push button if you're sick of cartoonists making fun of short T-Rex arms."
Needed thumbnail tribute, randomness selected

Credit to the Roguesymmetry link and signature in the picture. I have been pretty tired lately, although the body is somewhat cooperating. I do have issues sometimes reaching for things with my right arm though. That’s the arm with the weak shoulder, so stretching out the arm can push it beyond a certain limit and then I go ouch. I am really struggling for energy at the moment though.

Internet spaceship has been busy … and surprisingly ok on the arm. Although there are limits there as well. I’ve had a couple of days off the crazy travel mode flying but :

Screen capture picture. We see a map of our solar system, seen from above. Where we live is down in the lower part. A thick white trace shows my travel path over the last 12 months.
Zoom zoom space ship

That’s my Elite travel map over the last 12 months. There’s a lot of light years been travelled, although that includes the more epic round the galaxy to its extreme extents trip that finished around May this year. This one has been a bit more modest, starting out around our area of space down the bottom and sightseeing my way up and left (North Northwest) and around to the top end of the galaxy. Since then, it’s following a set of waypoints back into the Galactic Core and the way back will follow the faint green line on that map which starts off going to the right a bit.

I should get back well in time for a planned rendezvous and meet up with other Elite people on the 18th. And then I’m honestly not sure what will happen with Elite. The Odyssey expansion was such a disappointment. It is still a very pretty game though and I did like wandering around space. Some of the new minigames and mechanics though like the exobiology exploration are just really, really bad though. I’ve seen only minor variations on the new foliage on the atmospheric planets and the stuff you need to do to collect the required information to log them is … No. I’m not sure who in the dev team thought that was a good idea.

Oh as an aside, the thing behind the map there is from the podcast type stream I’m watching/listening to at the moment. It’s Sheepy’s aka TheWanderingInn (Twitch link) regular weekly Bar Brawl where he gets a guest in and talks about Stuff. Often it’s about the role playing shows that he runs and the guest’s part in that. And then they’ll go into the mayhem of an arbitrary Tier List. Chaos usually ensues with the tier list. Today’s guest is the ever wonderful Tashnarr (Twitch link again). They’re a good couple of streamer community people and I really enjoy the Tash streams.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pink diamond shaped ship is in the lower centre of screen. The left hand side is dominated by a round space station with a rectangular entrance in the centre. It is lit by a series of red lights. A planet is to the top right. The sky behind is clustered with a busy field of stars.
A home away from home

That’s Explorer’s Anchorage, a quick hop away from Sagittarius A* at the centre of our galaxy. I’m docked up there until resuming the journey back in, which will be at the weekend. (Combination of resting the arms and maxing out the funny internet currency earning that goes towards in game cosmetics).

Oh I’ve also been highly enjoying tearing cars apart and rebuilding them in Car Mechanic Simulator. It’s a satisfying thing. Perhaps I might be coming to the end of the big interest in that but it has been oddly cathartic. Dyson Sphere Programme appeared in the last steam sale as well.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. We're inside a white walled paint shop area. In the centre, a green Jaguar E Type convertible with super sleek classic lines.
Now with Jaguars

Cricket ? World Cup’s been pretty good so far, although there has been a definite pattern appear where the team batting second has been winning a disproportionate number of games. One reason for this is that with the games being played on the transition to night time, heavy dew comes down which affects the ability of the bowlers to grip the ball. This gives an advantage to the team batting first. I don’t think it’s actually changed the results much though, a lot of them have gone with the expected form.

England have been doing remarkably winning 2 very one sided games and then met Sri Lanka raised their game a lot from previous form and were unlucky to come second in that game. It’s mostly been down to just how good England have been all the way through the side. All of the players have been stepping up with great performances and while a few of the sides have been not great in the field, England have been nigh on perfect.

There’s a cricket saying which is “Catches win matches” and it’s massively true. Cricket sides tend to build a momentum, which can get unstoppable. A wicket usually slams a brake on that momentum, so missing that chance for a wicket by dropping an easy catch has a big impact on the game. Like in the Sri Lanka game, where it looked like Sri Lanka would get over the line for the win until England started taking wickets, with the wickets making the momentum of the game swing the other way.

Another one is the attitude that the teams show on the field as well. I used to really enjoy fielding closer in within the ring. It kept me involved in the game. I’d be noisy and constantly encouraging the other players in the team. Clapping a lot, bringing that noise, trying to terrify the batsmen into hesitating with over enthusiastic fielding. That’s really important too as if a side goes quiet, they drift and it allows the batting to build that momentum. I’d get bored when dispatched to the outer areas of the field. I was away from the people I’d be interacting with and generally less involved in the game. It was tough to maintain the focus out there. The huge thing though was what happens when something doesn’t go to plan, like a catch dropped or a bowler losing their focus. You can respond to that either by attacking your own team, or by upping the encouragement again with a “Next time!” or similar. Some of the teams in the World Cup have been going down the attacking the team route. You have to get your own game spot on there if you do that or it just brings down the team.

One of my later seasons saw a bowler come in after a long time off, including surgery. The tiredness was settling in and getting to him. So I walk back with him to his bowling mark, give him a bit of gentle encouragement, slow his walk down a little and give him a “Take your time, you got this”. Kinda like letting him borrow a bit of confidence back again by showing him that his fielding team mate had confidence in him. Took a wicket that over. Good times. That’s one I still remember :-D.

Anyway – England are doing great in the World Cup. It’s been great to see some of the newer sides come in as well. Like Afghanistan, who must terrify the major teams. They have a great side. Oman were wonderful hosts, it was sad that they didn’t win through.

What else to talk about ? Job change next week, looking forward to it.

Back to the Bar Brawl now though. Stay safe, be well, stay warm everyone.