Tag: games

Out and about

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May 31, 2021

8:57 pm

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Hello everyone …

I’ve had that strange thing of being out and about around the country again. Around people. Twice ! All with work, so I can’t say very much about it. One trip was bad, with a poor hotel (which I complained about, I never complain about that stuff) and other issues, one trip was good.

Pretty weird being out there again though. And good to see our people as well instead of just interacting with them over the Skype.

Oh I had 2 covid tests too, both came up negative. It’s a necessary evil of being out and about around people again. It’s weird doing the swabs, I gagged each time with the tonsils part of the thing. But there can’t be any exceptions to doing the testing … and it gives a certain amount of confidence in being able to more freely interact with people.

Ok. That’s enough about work related and plague related stuff. On to the spaceships ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A diamond shaped ship is to the lower right, shaded be the bright orange star to middle left. There is a grey planet centre top with a flat ring that we see as a line. The ship is scarlet with orange highlights and purple engine flares.
Set course for Lave

That’s my latest ship, the Manic Minarr, another Krait Mk II that I’ve set up for mining. All my Krait Mk II’s are named for Tashnarr, a lovely lady who streams the games for us and brightens evenings by being an incorrigible chuckler. Oh, the callsign is -IC3Y- or Icey by the way. Must get Murph into a callsign at some point. I went into the new Elite Odyssey expansion after writing last week’s post and I have VERY mixed feelings about the release. It’s basically come out too early and we were given pre-beta level code. That means that all of the advertised features were included but the code wasn’t in a fit state for customers to be given sight of it. Let’s see …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A white ship with red highlights is sitting on a landing pad inside a space station. Errors in the texture work are giving the ship a tatty, battered appearance.
Bit battered there ?

That’s Tea and Medals, a ship I used for speed running to the Core. I brought her out of the hangar again to pull some modified bits off into storage and … also screenshot. The grey glass doming there should be black and you can probably pick out texture and framing corruption riddling the image. Quick edit for an extra picture :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our white ship with red highlights sits on the landing pad, looking considerably shinier and in better repair than the last version. The canopy glass is black instead of grey.
From a different age

That’s Tea and Medals from before doing another Core speed run, as presented in the Horizons code. You can draw your own opinion from the comparison there. I refused to take a picture of the Admiral Luperza in the state the game was showing me that ship last week because it was just really poor quality. Oh and …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Lower left sees a landing leg which doubles as an entry lift. The body of the ship dominates the upper part of the image. An engine is on an outrigger to right of shot. You can see a white grid of lights through the entranceway to the ship.
Are those the ceiling lights ?

Yep. Those were the hangar lights, through the ship. This one is fixed now but it was just one symptom of how broken the graphics renderer was when this expansion was released. This bug is fixed now and the graphics look awesome again but it’s at a cost of two things :

Apparently the fancy planetary features have been sacrificed in order to get walking and on foot combat into the game. I haven’t seen this yet.

Heartbreakingly poor performance. I was fine doing a bit of mining yesterday but the frame rate dives down to such uncomfortable levels on docking that I was heavily considering putting a docking computer on again. (It costs 1m credits per mining run because the space for the computer takes up space for Stuff to sell). As in, planetary landings looked amazing ….

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A ship looking like an airliner with engines on outriggers (one is hidden behind the body) is landed on a white looking plain. In the background is a base with tower spires and flat buildings.
Aren’t you supposed to land at the base instead of outside ?

That’s how I had the game set up on Saturday. I’m still playing with the graphics options and this is mostly medium plus a bit. The frame rate is still disastrously poor. Oh, the dots by the nose is my pilot for scale. Most of the graphical bugs of release seem like they’ve been fixed over the last week but release was disastrous.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship from before is in a very shiny but dark purple colour scheme. She is landed inside a hangar. The graphics are losing certain of the deeper detail.
Shiny … but not right

You look close and the detailing in some of the non-purple bits is just absent and the crudeness of other textures in there are hidden by the shininess of the purple paint scheme. The Bridge of the ship is apparently absent.

That said though, when I was flying this weekend, I was happily falling in love with the graphics all over again. Just need some actual optimisation in the game and being able to acquire a long awaited graphics card upgrade. I was talking about changing the card this time last year with Deus Ex Mankind Divided … various things (cryptocurrency) mean that you just can’t buy graphics cards at the moment.

Here we go. This is what I mean …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. An orange and white ship is landed on a light grey planetoid. There is some detail in the ship but it is mostly a lightly detailed flat set of textures.
Looking a bit low detail there ?

That’s Tea-89 from the Alpha release of the game. I’ll accept a lack of decals, callsign identifiers and ship names in there because those weren’t in the Alpha. The lack of detail is appalling though and made its way into the release version of the game. Here’s the same ship after patching.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The same ship from before is sitting in a dimly lit hangar. The orange and white paint scheme is resplendent and this time you can see details such as thruster blocks where previously were blank textures.
Tea 89 is shiny again

What a lot of places doing comparison screenshots are doing is fiddling with the lighting, which to some extent I’ve done there. (Didn’t want to bring that ship out of the hangar this time). The difference after the first week’s patch is incredible, the ships look amazing again. And I did spend a certain amount of time flipping through the ships in the shipyard just to have a look at the increased detail. And there are quite a number of new screenshots of ships on the pad.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A flat ship looking like a blade is on the pad, poised for battle. She is mostly white, with a patterning of purple on her hull.
Ready for battle

That’s the Admiral Luperza again, looking stunning. She’s named for the lovely Margaret Krohn who I must add in a links list at some point. I really must do that before this site hits its first birthday. Maybe something for the list when I get some much required leave in a couple of weeks ! Anyway, the Federal Corvette was descending into a nasty mire of ugh looking before the patch, it’s awesome to see the detail on there again.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our scarlet Krait with orange highlights is sitting on a planetary landing pad. In the distance to the left are mining things on legs, more landing pads and a domed area to top right. The ship has the word "Delacy" written on the hull.
One shield mod, coming up

That’s our Manic Minarr sitting on the pad at one of the engineering bases, getting some work done on the shields. The paint job is a joke by the way. Another massive issue from the first week was frequent disconnections from the server. I was disconnected 4 times in a couple of hours. The most frequently reported error codes by people were Orange Sidewinder and … Scarlet Krait. So I built a scarlet Krait. It does look rather special though. I didn’t get disconnected over the weekend, so improvements again.

But … while I was quite happily falling in love with the game again, the whole disaster of the release of the expansion means I’m highly unlikely to be giving the developer, Frontier developments, any money or support any time soon. There have been design decisions going in which have broken some elements of the user interface (can’t turn in community goal rewards) or which have made elements worse, like the galaxy map, the mission system, the outfitting system and … the destination star doesn’t appear in the list if it’s too far away any more. (Something I used to use all the time but I have a workaround for it).

To release the game in such a poor broken state is unforgiveable, plus there’s a horrific lack of communication coming from Frontier, outside of them throwing their community managers to the wolves with orders to spam twitter and the other places with shiny happy screenshots. It’s a shoddy attitude that starts at the top of the company with people who have indulged in dodgy dealings in the past. And by that, I’m referring to Frontier Elite 2 where David Braben had a deal with Ian Bell, co-creator of the original Elite, to give royalties for any expansions. There wasn’t an expansion, there was a remodel called Frontier First Encounters badged as a new game, so no royalties. That caused a very acrimonious situation and it’s just one more symptom of how the people at the top of Frontier behave. Except this time, they’re doing it to customers as well.

Nuff said on that I think …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship with the two engine outriggers is flying away from shot. The ship is barely illuminated by a sliver of a sun peeking out from behind a black disc of a planet. White engine exhaust flare out behind the ship to the bottom left.
What’s around the planet ?

It is rather pretty still is it not ?

I think that’s it from me. New games have arrived ! I ended up buying some end of last week in a sale, plus soundtracks. More about those at some point. I finished the XCom 2 run today, so that’ll clear time and disk space for the new stuff.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Galaxy’s Haunted

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May 17, 2021

7:16 pm

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Hello everyone !

I’m trying to think of what I was getting up to over the last week ! I think generally taking it easy and doing assorted gaming while not in work times. The new Elite expansion is coming this week and I kinda wanted to be back before it hit because … expansions to online multiplayer games usually lead to mayhem with whether you can enjoy the game over the week or so of release times.

It’s been an epic trip … and a fairly epic finish as well. But …

Game screenshots. Elite Dangerous. Upper picture has our ship on the lower left, we are looking down on her from the starboard side. On the right is a Coriolis starbase, more in main text. Lower picture has the entrance way of the station on the left and the underside of our ship heading out, the ship is bristling with weapons.
Galaxy’s Haunted

Of course another reason for rushing back was that I had a meme in my head that needed to get out. I’ve skimped a little on the alt-text there because I wanted to expand a little bit for everyone … (plus I’m not really happy with how the text turned out) The station we see there is a Coriolis station, which was carried through from the very original Elite game from 1984. It’s a boxy mostly cubical structure with 6 square diamond sides, connected together by triangles at the corners. There is a mail slot entry port on one of the diamonds, which is how you get inside to the landing pads. The mailslot has a grill thing on the outside that’s called the toaster rack … oh and it’s just big enough for the biggest ships in the game. Searching for Dragons fits through handily for side to side … but you can reach out and touch the top of the mailslot (ish) when you go through.

I couldn’t resist this particular meme … it’s based on the Astronaut one with this version being :

Station : Sierra Foxtrot Delta, you’re home early, everything ok ?

Ship on the way in : Galaxy’s Haunted

Station : Say again, did not copy your last. Over.

Ship on the way out, bristling with weaponry : Galaxy’s Haunted.

It got me chuckling when I thought of it, hopefully people like it. It has been an epic trip around the galaxy, a good escape from what’s been going on out there.

Picture. Galactic Map. We look at the galaxy from the top down, seeing the spiral arms curl around. Our course is marked by white dots, starting at the low side of the picture and making an awkward circle starting going left, going clockwise with a little bit of doubling back along the way.
Do I get space miles for all that ?

There we go ! Big map. The route I followed is available at the Elite Dangerous Star Maps site under the name of The Everlasting Expedition (linky). It’s active for just over another year if you want to try it out. It requires a well supplied advanced ship to complete all of the waypoints, plus a tool like ED Discovery (the source for the map above) to plot a course to the outlying spots. The doubling back spots at Galactic East and Galactic South are where I needed to consult with the waypoint plotting tool to bridge the gap between the arms.

Still, Searching for Dragons did a grand job out there. Ship’s retired now and I’m wondering what I’ll do next, after the Odyssey expansion hits. Could well be a spell of combat. Ship’s seen some sights though …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see our ship in centre screen, she's flat and pointing to the left. Dominating the background is a large gas giant planet, coloured in neon green and purple. There are rings behind to the right.
Dreamer Blush

That was Dreamer Blush, one of the ultra rare Mint Choc planets that will hopefully survive the graphical changes coming with the expansion.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the starboard side of our ship in shadow. The galactic ribbon goes up and right. Behind the ship there is Barnard's Loop, a huge red gaseous part circle with a red cloud in the centre.
Going Loopy

That’s Barnard’s Loop, which is relatively close to where we are and it’s one of the more recognisable landmarks to show when you’re getting close to home again.

There are a heap more pictures as well. I’ll have to do a semi random pulling out of the best ones.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed and we're looking down at the starboard side. The buggy is a tiny spot near the front of the ship. We're on a pale blue mountain overlooking a very craggy reddish plain with an assortment of very tall blueish mountains jutting out that I could see from space on the way in.
Mountain ahoy !

This is the Aidoh’s Platform planet and another curious example of the extremes that the procedural generation system sometimes comes up with. In this case, a small planet with very prominent mountains and chasms.

Pretty place !

It has been a pretty epic trip lasting :

Website picture capture. We see a grid going from left to right, labelled underneath as November to May. A scale is under that starting at 0 on the left with white and 200 on right with a red. Above is an assortment of coloured dots.
Busy

That’s another capture from ED Star Maps, showing how active I was. The redder the dot, the more jumps done in the day. Some days were light, some saw me travel much longer distances. The early gap in November coincides somewhat spookily (nah) with when Mars Horizon came out. The gap in Jan/Feb saw really cold weather that was messing with my muscles, so I wasn’t playing game much then.

There are options for what happens next … and it’ll probably depend on what inspiration hits at the weekend. Let’s see :

Thunderdwagon 2, callsign IR1965 – a Beluga class passenger ship that will see service rescuing people from damaged starbases.

Admiral Luperza, callsign 9001<3 – a Federal Corvette that will do shooting type things.

Tiamat’s Chariot, callsign DL.SDL – an Imperial Cutter for idling around doing missions. I think a return to some ancient grounds at Azrael and Apathaam would be good.

Elysian Payday, BNKR08 – a ship for getting lots of credits from mining.

And perhaps a landing ship for the expansion. We shall see.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed on a cream (dunno!) coloured moon. We see her from the port side, pointing left. The buggy is out front again. The galactic ribbon is going up and a little right from the right side of picture. A large darker gas giant is visible just over the horizon with the rings visible going up and left.
Camping among the stars

That was another randomly found campsite to conclude a session earlier in the week.

It’s probably only a matter of time before I pick a ship and head out there again but I think that time’s going to be different. It’ll involve one of the big fleet carriers and I’ll have a couple of ships along to support. The carrier will need a mining ship to keep it fuelled, plus I’ll do more active surveying.

Later.

Different things for now !

This one’s been very internet spaceship heavy, I need to find more things to natter about ! That’s another thing coming … I haven’t been reading much lately, partly because these glasses have pretty much hit their end. New ones arrive on Friday !

Looking forward to diving into the books again.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Mouse, Ouch, Glasses, Trekking

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May 10, 2021

8:06 pm

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Hello everyone,

I need to get back into the habit of posting more often again ! I’ve won something …

Picture. On a cream fabric jumper there is a box and a computer mouse. The word Corsair is on the top left of the box. Bottom of the box says "Sabre RGB Pro Champion Series". The mouse is black with a rubberised wheel. Standing on the cable in front of the mouse is a little dwagon with an apron. The apron has a cartoon style drawing of a pretty blonde lady going Yay.
Mouse acquired !

I won it in a giveaway run on Tashnarr’s channel (Twitch link). Tash is a lovely lady and I’ve been watching her streams for a couple of years now. She rapidly became one of those people who I’d switch over to her stream as soon as she comes on. She has a blast playing the games and it’s infectious chilled out fun that brings a great community along as she goes. And Tash has fantastic engagement with that community. It’s not just Tash having fun with the games, it’s Tash enjoying us having fun watching too and joining in with daft things in the chat.

Mouse ? I set it up this evening after closing the work laptop down before having a play with a little photo editing there. So what I did for this one was :

Set up the jumper (including attempting to remove all wrinkles and folds for this mark 2 version !)

Make the pose happen. The mark 1 had the dwagon too low, hence propping him up on the mouse cable this time.

Tricky bit … Set phone camera to a 10 second delay …

Hold a pen light in a suitable place to banish the shadows from the sun coming in the window …

Juggle phone camera and pen light while the countdown is happening.

Sorted ! I think it came out ok. Oh and don’t worry about the framing when juggling the pictures like this. Modern cameras have a ridiculous amount of pixels so if you capture stuff outside the border you want, just crop it to size. (Also rotate and scale). I use GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), it’s free and does what I need on the photo editing, although it does have its usability quirks.

The ouchie though is one reason why I’m not doing any gaming tonight. (That’s ok, am enjoying the Tashnarr stream). My shoulder was starting to complain through yesterday’s Elite internet spaceship travel session so I wasn’t going to be in there today. But my back has apparently decided to join in as well today. Not as in big pain but more like that promise of deep pain and being on the floor after an injudicious movement. So I’m being careful in how I move again and how I’m sitting. (Probably perversely brought on by sitting more normally this afternoon !)

Spaceship ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're landed on a brown coloured moon. The ship is to the right of scene, we're seeing her port side. The buggy is in front, pointing to the right. We see the milky way galaxy ribbon stretching out left to right above the horizon.
Shadow camp

This is me starting off from the Fire and Ice system over in galactic south east. There’s been some epic trekking going on …

Picture. Galactic map for Elite Dangerous. We see the map of the galaxy from above, with the spiral arms stretching out. Earth starts in the lower centre. A line of white dots goes to the centre and back. It then stretches to the west and around clockwise to the top, curling round to the right and stops at the south.
Almost there !

That’s the latest travel map from yesterday, which saw me reach the furthest extent of the Outer Arm Vacuus. That’s the spiral arm that’s next out from the one we’re on. There’s a curling back of the line again where I had to circle around in order to find a region of stars that were navigable between the two spiral arms. Limited hop range and all that and not enough stars to hop between. Next stop will be to the south with the faint green line showing the intended course. Oh and ignore the red line, that’s from the map software picking up a hop done in the Elite Odyssey alpha. Definitely ignore the faint spreadsheet type thing over to the left hand side … Caught out by a partially transparent map !

Glasses ? Yep. New glasses coming. I had the eyes tested on Friday and they both went back in ok. I need to switch to two pairs of glasses, one set for reading and one for more normal long distance but I was expecting that. I’m getting to That Age you know. It’s a shame to lose the magnetic clip on shades thing but no one seems to do those frames any more. A pity because it made it far easier to choose new frames. Instead of looking at a whole wall of frames, all I needed to look at were the ones with built in shades. I’ll go reactalite adaptive instead because I don’t really need to control the shades/no shades like in the cricketing days.

I’ll do a suitable picture at some point when they arrive. I was already having thoughts about how I could get the dragons involved in that.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. This is the Australis Ferris Wheel. We see the ship landed on a brown dirt moon, port side towards the camera with the buggy in front. Top left sees a dark perhaps violet planet and stretching out from it is a white ring system that goes to the horizon of our moon.
Australis Ferris Wheel

That’s the Australis Ferris Wheel and was well worth a stop on the way. The planet in the background has a moon that has just enough inclination in its orbit to put it above the ring system. So instead of seeing a thin line of a ring, it stretches out before you like in the picture. Is pretty.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Same planet as before. We're landed on the dirt moon looking at the back of the ship. The curved end of the ring is in sight at the horizon. We see two huge rectangular engines with the upper hull places above. There is a flash of orange hull with the landing legs behind.
Does my ship’s bum look big in this ?

After taking a similar picture from the Odyssey alpha, I had the idea to do this one as well. You can’t walk around in the main game yet but if you could, the pilot could walk under the gap in the middle of the aft landing legs and reach up on tiptoes to touch the underside. Scale is a fun thing :-).

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the upper portside of the ship facing towards the camera. Above is the ribbon of the milky way galaxy finishing at the right just before a bright yellow orange sun.
Playing interstellar fireworks again ?

That’s the view back from the Semotus Beacon, which is the furthest point reachable at the end of the Outer Arm Vacuus. No more traveling away, it’s all towards home now. (Shoulder and back permitting !)

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is in the centre, pointing downwards. Colours are all washed out by the power of two suns. Up and right is a white/blue star. To the left is an orange star.
Sun bathing

This is Red vs Blue, a pair of stars of which one is a Herbig Ae/Be star. That’s a protostar, very early in its life. The game representation is probably not too correct, they’re supposed to have gas dust envelopes for formation or discs of matter. They look great though in game, although I was nervous about coming out of the jump around a twin star. Too many stars close up lead to the ship getting too hot.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed, with portside towards camera. The illumination is showing off the colour scheme of orange at the back, ochre yellow in the middle and grey towards the front. The buggy is peeking out of the ship's shadow towards the front. There is a shallow impact crater behind the ship. Above the horizon is a gas giant mostly in shadow with an arc of the sun visible on the right. We see the rings going from the tip of the horizon up and right. Above the gas giant is a smaller looking gas giant.
An Eock Hypue campsite

This is where I left it yesterday after probably too long a run. Maybe. 🙂 (I was close to the next waypoint and wasn’t finding any promising candidates to stop at).

Oh and then we go figuring out the way to the next waypoint, which needs a couple more boosts to get there. The route I’m following was intended for people with Fleet Carrier support, those can go 500 light years in a single jump. Searching for Dragons currently does 73 light years to a jump, with options for 91 and 109.5 light year jumps. (I don’t have the bits for the longer jump). So I’m a little restricted compared to that. It’s felt like an achievement being able to get to the places I probably shouldn’t have been able to get to … but it’ll be good to get back to doing something different in game.

That’s what the spreadsheet behind the galaxy map was for, it’s my route to Amundsen’s Star at the southern tip of the galaxy.

But that’s for another day, hopefully when my back has settled down a bit !

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Walking, racing, jumping … skating ?

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May 3, 2021

8:29 pm

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Hello everyone,

We just had our May Bank Holiday weekend, which meant … more time off work ! I spent mine variously looking at the Elite Odyssey Alpha and motor racing. There was nearly a peek at more remote control car models but that can wait a little bit and I don’t think I know enough about them yet. Oh ! I have an eye test booked in for next week, which is massively overdue.

First … thumbnail pic ? Hope it works this time !

Picture. This is a Lego model of a pair of figures dancing on an ice rink. The rink is circular and shaded in clear light blue flats, with most of the model being in white. There are two trees and a drinks stand over to the right. One model is a blonde lady with a red scarf, the other is a chap with a blue beanie hat. A dwagon looks on from the left side.
Dwagon does not know how to skate

It’s one of the Lego VIP models that came with the Space Shuttle. A smart little construction underneath there too. There are another set of cogs underneath, so if you turn the lower cog that’s sticking out, the dancers go around the rink and twirl around.

I did the deed with the Elite Odyssey expansion and bought into the Alpha … I’ve had a little look at it over the weekend but honestly, I don’t see how much is there for me plus it needs a massive amount of work before it can be considered for release. Hopefully that’s already been done because apparently the build we’re playing on is at least a month behind the one the devs have. (They must be testing the netcode out)

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see our pilot there, in front of an immense landing leg (with a pair of pads) that she could walk under. The bulk of the ship is to the upper left. The scene is inside a landing area with a roof.
Mustn’t bump my head

The scale of the ships is impressive. This is the latest expansion and the Alpha allows us to walk on planets, space stations, landing pads but not inside the ships yet. The game didn’t let me walk under that landing leg but it was fun seeing that the gap there meant I should have been able to stand under it. The detail is curious. Some of the Alpha stuff has incredible detail, some is …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. In the background is a white gas giant with brown/orange highlights. It has burnt orange rings. Our ship is in the foreground and we see it from behind and above. The ship is mostly trapezoidal, with the side parts being orange and the middle stripe in white.
Tea 89 on an Odyssey

The quality is still amazing but the ship should be better … and you see the difference in levels of detail when you’re close up. Could be bugs, it’s probably me having special livery items that aren’t properly in the alpha version yet. Like the “TEA-89” identification labels that should be very visible. I tried a couple of missions involving retrieving an item from a base (no screenie apparently, game must have lagged out the pressing of Button.) and getting into a wrecked thingy.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We are landed on a moon with a white surface. Our little pilot stands in front of the ship that dominates the right side of the image. (Orange wings, white stripe, we see the ship from the port side). There is a moon just above the horizon and a small wrecked object to the left.
Time for salvage !

This was me looking to retrieve an item from a crashed satellite and running into one of the issues … Cut off the access panel and the access panel falls into the hole and you can’t get it out. Oops. There’s also terrible performance which is apparently down to the game attempting to render too much, although it felt like that improved when I turned supersampling* down in the second session. Oh, the thing to look for in the detail is the edging between ships surfaces. It looks positively crude compared to what’s in the current state of the game.

*Supersampling – creating the image at a higher resolution than it is displayed at. This leads to better detail at a cost of performance. I play at 2560×1440 pixels. Supersampling at 1.25x means the game creates (renders) the image at 3200×1800 pixels.

So that’s me walking …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. My character's avatar is in shadow, standing in front of the camera. On a sofa behind her sits a gentleman dozing off. People are gathered together over to the right and through a window behind, are shop windows and displays for the concourse of a space station.
He’s missing the action !

One thing that’s caught attention is this fella, dubbed Peter the Sleeper, which makes me a little more relieved again about the choice to move my name on from Sleepypete and make Sleepydwagonman the more consistent online name. (Plus there are a bunch of Sleepypetes and only one Sleepydwagonman).

More stuff that was going on was the return of World Endurance Championship racing. It feels like this series might be dying off, although it was good to see the debut of the hypercars. The race had interest all the way through, although the organisers are probably contributing to the series dying by locking the coverage of it behind paywalls. IMSA provides a superior product with better racing across all classes, better commentary and you can actually watch all of it, rather than the paltry amount that the Eurosp…. people deign to show. It’s sad because it’s selling short the efforts of the people bringing the cars to make the races happen.

Oh and then there’s F1, which had a decent race this weekend too. I’m looking forward to the Nurburgring 24 hour race coming up in a month. That’s always got interest going all the way through the field as cars fall back for repairs and then come back through.

Jumping ? I carried on with the quest to circle the galaxy, today’s trip was a bit more convoluted because it needed a bit of careful navigating and boosted jumps to hop across the gap between spiral arms. Back to the main game !

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see a wedge shaped warship in a Shipyard selection screen. The ship is mostly white, with purple shapes painted on towards the forward end.
Admiral Luperza in the Odyssey shipyard

That’s the Admiral Luperza (named for Maggie Krohn) in the Odyssey shipyard ship selection screen …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the Federal Corvette ship on a landing pad from port side and above. Same colour scheme as previous but with additional grey black detail present and much more detail seen on the hull.
Admiral Luperza awaits

If the Odyssey release sees the ships having the detail of the one in the Shipyard picture, instead of the detail that’s in the main game, something will have gone seriously wrong. Still, it’ll be nice to have another dimension to the game and I’m anticipating fun being the getaway pilot with a little ship that’s set up to get into places and then quickly make an escape, while the people keen on the ground stuff have their larcenous fun in bases.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're in the shadow of the planet in the background. We can see the dawn rise arc to the right. Our ship is lower centre, seen from port side. A cluster of engines above and small patterns of lights betrays the presence of a carrier ship.
Visiting the Reginleif

Stopped off and repaired at the DSSA Reginleif carrier today, before heading on to :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed on a grey surfaced moon. We see the ship from the forward starboard quarter and can read the name "Searching for Dragons". The buggy is below the ship and a small blue planet is just peeking above the horizon.
Earthrise ?

That’s where I stopped tonight, a surprise Earthlike planet to check out a couple of jumps away from the carrier.

Hope you all had great weekends !

Stay safe, be well.

Sleepy time

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April 11, 2021

7:47 pm

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Gosh,

Didn’t really mean for it to be a week and a bit since the last post but there we are ! Oh well. A couple of things to mention from the last post … it was one of the more obvious April Fools posts but I had enjoyment typing it up and doing the simple (and not so simple) modification for the Dwagon in Black pictures. I did do the thing you’re not supposed to do and cut a watermark off one of the pictures … But that was someone claiming a copyright they don’t own. The Pocket Dragons are the copyright of Real Musgrave and their now defunct organisation (link to wiki), so someone else putting a watermark on them is the equivalent of the people stealing art for the new Non Fungible Token fad.

Credit your artists wherever you can, hopefully that means they get a little bit more back for their art which means they can afford the expenses that goes into making that art which means they make more art.

I’ve been off work this week, needed a break and some time away from it. I’ve been mostly in the games although I am enjoying watching the end of the Masters today. There’s also been lots of stream watching … a lot of it blurring into the early morning. Oops. Mind you, there’s been a bit of Mars Horizon addiction feeding into that too.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the Anaconda ship from above and behind the right side. An orange rear flank is looking precisely painted. She is pointing towards a blue water planet with an orange red moon. A grey red planetoid is below.
Will this be the thumbnail today ?

Yep, Elite’s happened as I steadily make my way around the galaxy. I’m in a curious spot at the moment where I need to make my way around a gap between the spiral arms of the galaxy …

Picture. Web browser. We see a clip of the Eastern edge of the galaxy, black background with increasing white to show where there are more stars. Two circles are present, I was at the left circle. The right circle is my destination. There is a straight line between them and a more jagged line showing the required route going down, right and then up and right.
Helm, Set the Satnav

That’s the path needed to get where I’m headed … You can’t bridge the gap between galactic arms by going direct because there aren’t enough stars there, so I started picking up the advanced planning at the left circle. The map above is from the Neutron Star Route Planner, which is giving lots of waypoints to go between. I’m mostly not going by that … although I have been using it as a guide. There’s another change coming as well because I’ll stop off at another carrier along the way. (The other tabs there are EDSM Elite Dangerous Star Map pages with my waypoints plus there is one for the Neutron Star Plotter, EDDB’s Stations page and my current location)

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the ship from her starboard upper side, showing off the K08oLD callsign. A grey gas giant dominates the background with grey brown, white and darker grey rings surrounding the planet. The ship is above the rings and we are looking down on them. In the background are two much smaller ringed planets.
Putting a ring on it

Seeing the sights along the way too, although I kinda want to be doing other things in the game now instead of travelling. I’ve been doing that in the game for quite a while. Oh and there’s an expansion coming soon as well, I have very little interest in the Scifi Space Shooter aspects that have been brought in (more on that later) but it will be good to get out and walk on planets instead of just taking the buggy.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the ship landed on a dark planet. The port side of the ship faces the camera and she is lit by the headlights of the rover. The galactic ribbon of stars is in the background.
A quiet campsite

That’s where I left things yesterday. Still lots of travel to do, this is at the lower part of that path where it started going to the right.

Talking of satnav … I did a bit more out and about in the car on Thursday. The main objective was to do something about the empty plastic bottles that have been getting out of hand … I take these to recycling bins but the usual one got taken away. (There’s another one, sorted !) And I wanted to get hold of a magazine about remote control cars too, to learn a bit more about those before I look into actually shelling out cash on them. You know, figure out what you should put the money towards and learn what to avoid spending money on.

That’s a future likely hobby again. I could do with having a place to work on them (too much junk taking up space that I need to throw out !). This is kinda sparked off by the new Lego remote control buggy … Lego’s great but I don’t have much confidence in it staying together as a buggy going over jumps. It’s time to go for something a bit more sturdy there. But which one ?

One thing I did see on the roundabout route back was an empty skating park … Brain saw that and thought it would be ideal place to play with a remote control buggy at. Will have to do more research there.

It was good to be out and about in the car, learning more about it. Handles nice, although I did manage to wake up the traction control on there. (I was behaving … mostly) The mpgs were going up steadily too. I’ll look to be out and about more as the lockdowns steadily lift. One curious thing, it’s odd to be hearing the rattles of the bus in front (it had a badly malfunctioning turbo I think) as you’re going along at a little under 40mph.

Game screenshot. Mars Horizon. We're on the orange/red planet of Mars. A number of assorted pop up orange constructions are in the background. We see a module on legs with round windows to the right. A six axle rover is in the centre and a red Chinese flag is in the foreground.
To Mars !

Yep. Been playing Mars Horizon again. It’s still a wonderfully addictive simple game to play and I hugely enjoy it.

Game screenshot. Planetbase. We see a dark airless moon and an orange giant planet in the background. The surface is littered with solar panels, cylindrical power batteries and many small domes of living space with connection corridors between them.
The colony grows

I had a little look at Planetbase again last week too. This is one of only a few games where I have all of the achievements. It’s a simple one to play, with external objects like power generators (solar panels and wind turbines), power batteries, water collectors and landing pads. Inside the base are botany farm domes for food, production domes, sleeping domes, canteens and exercise areas, labs and medical domes. It’s strength is also a weakness … if you can see the signs, then you can make the decision to stop the colony dying out due to lack of food or other crisis. But you can also have things happen like all your medics die because they were going outside in a solar flare storm which leads to radiation poisoning which doesn’t end well if you aren’t making the medicine because that’s coded out of the AI.

Yep. Game has issues … but I could understand them, play within those issues and still enjoy the game. Whereas something like Banished would suddenly murder your colony in a death spiral for which you would have no understanding of the cause. (May need to look at Banished again).

Colony builders are usually nice chilled out games and good for a bit of relaxation. I should get back to Per Aspera and Surviving Mars at some point, plus Aven Colony was on my wish list for a while, I now own that courtesy of Humble Bundle.

Talking of more travel …

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. Two characters are standing near a cliff ledge. In the distance we see floating rocks and a mountain. There are faint planetary rings in the cloudy blue sky.
It’s one small step for gaming …

I’ve been enjoying Mass Effect Andromeda again, in its early stages. It’s a fun game, probably goes on a bit too long though and I’m a little frustrated that it gates your progress. The reason for that is in spoiler space but the brief summary is that as you go on, the planets become more habitable and you can reach places you couldn’t before. Like quest markers that are literally 10 feet beyond where you can go. That’s frustrating …

But as said, it’s also a huge fun game and I like the various characters. Especially Sara Ryder. It’s a much more fun themed game than the earlier Mass Effect games, definitely not taking itself particularly seriously. The Mass Effect trilogy remake is coming later in the year. I have mixed feelings about that but might well get it anyway. I hugely enjoyed the world set up in the first two Mass Effect Games, I didn’t enjoy seeing that get torn down in Mass Effect 3.

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. Our character is standing on a platform beside container boxes. The landscape is orange, arid and rocky. There are boxy colony building modules to the left and the ship is to the rear of shot.
Anyone seen my ship ?

Early days. Looking to enjoy the game more. The graphics can be better … I’ve been kinda holding off on playing the prettier games like this until I could put a graphics card upgrade in. Those are in incredibly short supply at the moment as demand has vastly outstripped supply. As in, you cannot get graphics cards of any kind at the moment outside of paying massively over the odds to people who lurk in the supplier websites and then resell for a profit.

Other games have included :

Stellaris – I’m nowhere near as much a fan of this as in the early days. Not sure. It’s got too many bugs in there now and I just find other games more satisfying and enjoyable to play.

Motorsport Manager – I’m closing in on winning Phase 2 of my Win Every Championship campaign. My manager is 61 years old though, I wonder if there is an upper enforced retirement age limit.

XCom 2 – a little … a couple of fights happened but I’ve been in Motorsport Manager and Mars Horizon more.

Music has happened with a Morcheeba album, an old All About Eve concert cd and Christine and the Queens appearing. I’ve been enjoying those.

But I can hear that dinner bell going off now so I think it’s time to (check what I’ve written for a change) hit post.

Good restful week off, there’s been a few headaches along the way (probably need more fresh air), did get out and about … missed the cheap leftover Easter Eggs, lots of games, lots of stream watching to enjoy.

Hope you all had a great week, stay safe, be well.

A year of lockdown, also jabby

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March 24, 2021

8:49 pm

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Hello everyone,

Last week’s been a bit weird, at least since Saturday. I got jabbed …

Picture. A green Pocket Dragon looks at you expectantly. He is wearing a disc like torch above his right eye and he's carrying an implement that looks like a stethoscope.
Doctor will see you now

Yep. Jab on Saturday. I was pleasantly surprised to get the call actually, I’m a little below the 50 year old threshold got called last week but whatever the reason, I’m glad I had it.

I think I have had side effects from it but that’s something I’ll happily accommodate if it means opening everything up again. Besides, that’s a sign that the vaccine is doing its job in getting your body’s defences ready to fight a pretty nasty virus. I’ve mostly been in a bad brain condition for the few days since, although today has been better. My muscles were complaining over the weekend as well.

If you’re hesitant about the vaccine due to a fear of needles, don’t be. I barely felt a prick as they did mine and couldn’t see the evidence of the hole it made. I’m a bit nervous about needles. I make a point of looking away, so that I don’t tense up as I see the needle going in. Being relaxed makes the job easier for the stabby person and that makes it easier on you too.

It’s been a weird year hasn’t it … I’ve barely seen anyone I know all year. I’ve seen my mum once. I’ve seen barely any of the friend people, just in random encounters in Tesco. I’ve spotted my neighbour Cyberkitten a few times. Chinese happened a couple of times. It’s good to see the lady who slips bonus prawn crackers into the bag. Pizzas have kept coming … Shopping trips were cut down to a bare minimum.

I’ve seen work people on two occasions since this time last year when we were at an away trial. Our place went work from home very early and stayed that way even over last summer.

Hmm. Must think of something to write up for April 1st. I’m short on ideas at the moment.

But yeah … this last year has been very different. Perhaps it’s indulged a reclusiveness tendency ? Yeah, I’ll need to break that.

Cartoon Picture. A cute lady is standing on her own in the middle of groups, one of which has a party hat. Caption "I could be home on the internet right now"

The internet communities have probably gotten a lot stronger over the last year, outside of a certain amount of craziness last summer when we didn’t really know what was going on. Some of the internet communities are better than others, I’ve walked away from one and I’ll walk away from another soon. Gotta look at your own mental health and if a community is bad for that, find a different one.

Oh ! This blog happened as well, in a crazy few days in October. I need to do more work on it to be honest. Things like carrying over the blogroll and the useful links from the old blog. There are a few other things too :

Alt-text – first up because I think this is really, really important ! I’ll get back to accessibility later but this one is for people who depend on screen readers. The alt-text for images is my attempt at describing them for people who can’t see them. I would have liked to go back through all the posts when I got time but it ain’t gonna work for the 1700 or so posts that were imported over from the old blog.

Dark mode / light mode – accessibility again. It’s really important that when you make a site, it’s accessible by everyone. Some people get blinded by dark text on white background. (I don’t like that on screens, it works for me in books though). I like white text on a dark background with screens. It’s kinder on my eyes.

And a few other points that are escaping my still a little addled brain at the moment.

Accessibility is absolutely key though. I’ve clicked on a few links and then immediately closed the site due to things like paywall blocking, cookie popups and other things that force you do to stuff you don’t want to agree to. Or it could be because you simply cannot read what’s on the screen.

That’s ok. If you’re affected by accessibility issues, then it’s the responsibility of the person making the site to make sure we accommodate you. We want you to stay and read, if you can’t then we lose you as a reader. Every reader is important, whatever the scale of the site.

I think I’m rambling … Screenshot time ?

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is in front, wearing metal plate armour like medieval knights would wear. It has silver patterning on a green surcoat. The helmet is metal, with the point at the front. A lady in a more revealing outfit stands to her left. This is an indoor scene.
Pointy Hat ! Errr, wait ?

Got a new hat ! And shiny armour that, contrary to fantasy game norms, actually looks protective …

I’ve been having another look at the Pathfinder Kingmaker game as well. More on that at another time, I’m barely through the prologue on that one but it is great to see that it’s grown a turn based mode. That’s a weird thing. Table top role playing games started with pen and paper systems, where everyone, player and monster, took turns to act. When Baldur’s Gate came around in the 90s, everything still took its turn but it was presented to the player as a simultaneous action thing. My brain never really got on with that. It’s funny to see things turn full circle again now, with Pathfinder growing its turn based mode and Baldur’s Gate 3 also going turn based.

It makes for more relaxing gameplay, especially when there’s a lot going on in the encounters. Like 15 characters and enemies in the encounter that Fuzzy is playing through at the moment on stream. (Twitch link)

As a weird aside, I find myself craving tomato ketchup. I haven’t had tomato ketchup in years. Wonder what reminded me of it ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the darkened shape of the port upper side of the spaceship, lit dimly by the glowing heatsinks at the back. Behind is the white cloud of the galaxy ribbon, lensed by a black hole in the left hand side of the image.
Thanduc’s Retreat

I’ve visited another black hole since the last post … Managed to get a great angle too.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. My ship is looking rather battered in the lower centre foreground. Behind is a very large space station type ship called a fleet carrier. There is a control tower in the middle and landing pads behind. The galactic ribbon can be seen above.
Where’s the bar ?

I wanted to see what that paint job really looks like though.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A close up of my ship on the landing pad. The paint is perfect again, with segments of orange, grey, white and a washed out yellow. We see the port upper side. The name "Searching for Dragons" is now readable, as is the callsign "K080LD" or Kobold to the rear.
All shinied up again

Looks rather smart doesn’t it ? Happy with this one.

I better sum up here, it won’t be a week until the next post. Car’s coming on Friday and I’ll be going someplace to a) pick it up and b) get pictures. The fact that the place to get pictures will also have a farm shop is purely coincidental … honest.

Picture. Meme. A small dog is wearing a mask, looking up at someone off screen. The captions are "I can assure you, madame" and "Dogs are perfectly capable of performing a cat scan."
Believe in Dog

Stay safe everyone, be well and if you are offered a vaccination soon, please do take it. The side effects are worth the pay off we’ll all get later when shops, cinemas, restaurants and the rest are able to open up again and we’re able to go Out There again with no fear of plague.

Car’s Haunted

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March 15, 2021

8:10 pm

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Hello everyone,

Haha, that’s a fun title from a fun meme. But that’s a little what it felt like on Friday night when I tried to do shopping. (The TLDR is that car was resurrected, shopping happened and the ghosts are quiet again).

Picture. An old red car with chrome trim and white walled wheels. The caption is "Christine. She may weigh 3,510 pounds but, I'm sure as hell not going to call her fat."
Eek

I can’t remember watching that movie but the meme’s there. It’s from Christine, penned by Stephen King and filmed by John Carpenter, where a car is haunted, possessing a possessive personality that has taken a liking to her new owner.

There’s another meme about the Moon … This one goes like :

NASA Employee : “Hey, you guys are back early”

Astronaut : “Moon’s haunted”

NASA Employee : “What ?”

Astronaut : (loading a pistol and getting back on the rocket ship) “Moon’s haunted”

And here we come to Friday … I’ve mentioned this before but it’s worth saying it again (mebbe), hybrids have 2 batteries. There’s a 12V like a normal car and a massive 220V (they vary) traction battery energy store. Whereas a normal car will start by the 12V cranking the battery and then run off the alternator, the hybrid starts up all of its electronics on the 12V and then the engine is cranked using the traction battery.

However, if the 12V battery goes flat when the car isn’t used, odd things can happen. The first sign is weird messages on start up if the charge is getting low, or a dead car if the battery’s flat. The locks work off the 12V battery (there’s a mechanical key as backup).

If the charge level is just too low to allow the car to start up, Very Strange Things Happen. Like lights flickering on and off, which steadily reduce in brightness until dead car happens. This was when all the doors were unlocked too, so it needed sorting out that night.

Thankfully, I’d made preparations and had acquired a portable jump starter thingy (A Thing With A Battery And Jump Leads), in anticipation for this kind of situation occurring again. I’d seen the process done before a couple of times on 2 Lexii by AA People but this was the first time I’ve done it myself. There’s a connector under the bonnet that you’re supposed to use, or you can attach the leads to the battery in the boot, if you can get to it (mechanical lock again). I won’t describe that too much here, there are videos that do it better.

So yep, car behaving like it was haunted, throwing up a few errors for a while after I got it going again (low battery level). But it’s all ok now, verified by taking it kebab hunting last night. (I needed to find a recycling place for bottles and needed an excuse to make sure car was still ok). The cause is consequences from driving much less these days in the situation we’re all in.

I need a name for the next car by the way … I’m drawing a blank and should move away from the Star Trek theme from the last 3.

First IS was called Grey Ghost, because it was silent and grey. The name was what they called the Enterprise in WW2. So …

Second IS was called Alpha, after NCC 1701A. And then the third one was called Stan, after NCC1701B was an Excelsior class. Stan Lee did like using the word Excelsior. Following that trend, NCC1701C was an Ambassador class, but I think I go away from Enterprises because it’ll be a different type of car.

Other travels have been occurring …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship is landed on an orange/grey moon, with various smoke geysers erupting. We see the aft starboard side of the ship, pointing away from the camera. She has new colours, part yellow, part grey and dark grey. We see the planet's rings in the distance. The galactic ribbon rises from the surface and at the end of it, is a sun.
Fiery whoosh !

Shiny. That’s how I logged back in the other day and I was experimenting with trying phone aspect ratio screenshots. (I.e. tilt 90 degrees and then rotate the result in MS Paint). Sometimes the best screenshots have a bit of planning, sometimes they’re just the fortuitous result of logging in just at the right time.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship is in front of a water planet with ice at the pole. The planet is ringed with a mixture of white and black rings. The ship is above the rings and is showing off the new paint job, which is orange at the back, going into yellow, with the rest of the flank being light grey and dark grey. There is an orange tip. The top is in shadow.
Shoulda put a ring on it, oh wait !

Nice place. Can’t land on it yet.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the spaceship from the port forward quarter. The buggy is to the right. They're on a dark grey reddish moon. In the top left, we see a planet that looks like our own, blue ocean, white clouds and green land.
So close to the tea

That’s me visiting an Earth Like planet, actually one of those in the database, a planet called To Behold. A little taste of home, far from home.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the port side of the ship, with the buggy a short distance away. She's in what looks like a curved plain, with a mountain about 5 times the height of the ship in the background. There is a faint arc of another planet above the hill.
That hill fell from the sky

What looks fairly flat there is actually an impact crater on a moon … You might just be able to see the faint circle of a planet above the top left of the hill. The hill is the impactor. It felt like a good place to stop for the session …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the starboard upper side of the ship, fully lit except for the part above the engines. She is orbiting a ash coloured planet with a lot of red lava patches. The ship is above planetary rings, grey to the outer edge and white on the inside.
Firey

Not a great place to set up the summer house but a spectacular place to go by. I could have stopped there today on one of the moons of this place (for the tourist piccys) but wanted to cover a bit more distance.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship dominates the image. We see a bit of the upper side, with the orange wings to the right side. There are two large square engines. She is descending to a light blue coloured planet with reddish canyons that look like something huge has clawed its way across the surface.
Lovely canyons

Bit of a rushed pic, I snapped that one just as the ship was about to transition to the dive that they do between space flight and planetary flight.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the landed ship from the front port quarter, with the buggy in front again. The scene is very well lit showing a pale blue (icy?) surface and at ground level, we see a hint of the reddish canyons. A brown gas giant is in the upper left and we see a hint of its rings.
Blue campsite

This is where I stopped the session tonight, after going a little more around the north side of the galaxy. I’m definitely wanting to be back in the civilised areas of the galaxy now, although it’s good finding curious places to take hopefully great looking screenshots at.

Game Screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is on the left, looking at the mysterious fellow in a white shirt and leather overtunic who is kneeling down checking something out on the ground.
Investigating …

Final Fantasy XIV is being fun still. I’m about to move on to a place where I should be able to get my dangerous dragon lady some fancy armour too. Still a bit early days for this one but it’s a fun game to dip in and out of.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is looking at the camera, wearing a metal breastplate which is bronze on the shoulders and dark grey in front. She has dark metal gauntlets and a yellow helmet. One eye has a shiny iris.
Hat needs more pointiness

I still have the pointy hat.

Hmm … I think after rambling like that, time to close ! So …

Car’s haunted (I think the dead battery before Xmas caused some permanent damage to the battery), internet spaceship travels are finding some nice places and Dangerous Dragongirl has been helping people out. There’s been a couple of physical issues as well though. I hurt my arm by playing Mars Horizon with the mouse in the wrong place, that’s mostly recovered now. Doing stuff with the car on Friday had an impact over the weekend as well but that’s mostly better as well now.

Time to catch up on today’s news … which I’ll be avoiding talking about because I’ll say things that at least a few people would spark off on ! Like appearing at a vigil with a protest shirt on, causing trouble and then getting photographed with said protest shirt. That’s not being respectful to the person the vigil was organised for, that’s being unforgiveably political. See ? In danger of being political :-D.

Stay safe, be well.

Final Doxx Fantasy and (Spaceships)

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March 6, 2021

10:44 pm

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Hello everyone,

Another week in the books … Getting closer to Easter ! I’m enjoying the Mini Eggs while we have them. Hmm, maybe it’s find for the Mini Eggs avatar …

Picture. A small packet of chocolate Mini Eggs beside a Pocket Dragon sniffing the air. The Pocket Dragon is wearing a chest tabard that says "Feed Me"
Tasty Things

It’s the usual things this week. Work, which I don’t talk about much here (it’s a separate thing). Relaxing in the evenings, I’ve been enjoying watching Fringe again, it’s been getting repeated on SyFy channel over the last month or so. It was a cracking series in its day and still stands up really well. It felt like there was a plan going through its arcs.

I’ve abandoned a book ! I’d been attempting to get into the 1978 novelisation of the original Battlestar Galactica. From the book, it’s obvious that there was a lot more thought gone into the backstory of that earlier version than went into the new one. I think that’s what soured me on the new series. The space scifi action stuff was amazing but it fell apart for me with the psychological aspects and … a lot of it just didn’t make sense. It hit a pinnacle with the storming of New Caprica episode and dived down a tunnel from there.

The next book is going to be Shadow Captain, book 2 of the Revenger series by Alastair Reynolds. Haven’t quite opened it yet. Later :-D.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the Anaconda from her starboard bow pointing right. In the background is a white planet with surface features that look like scarring. There are delicate rings around the planet. The galactic ribbon is in the background.
Ringy Loveliness

A little bit of internet spaceship happened, to be honest though I wasn’t feeling the spaceship thing much this week so I only did a short hop. Still 64,000 light years from home. I ended up pitching up the tents in a canyon …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The Anaconda is landed, we see her port side. The buggy is to the lower right, in front of the back end of the ship. There is an icy looking canyon wall to the right. A very faint dark gas giant can be seen in the background.
A restful stop

XCom 2 has had another little look and I’ve figured out how to the get the old mods loading …

Game screenshot. Xcom 2. Character customisation. We see Natasha Bambam, in plated armour with blue fabric underneath. She has long blonde hair with eye shades. She wields a gun that looks like an elongated Corgi.
Let Slip the Dog Of War

That’s one of the silly ones, called the Acorg-47 mod. I won’t be using that one much (the other weapons are better and this mod is funny but silly) but it was a good test case to get things working again. Anyway, this was a semi frenzied thing today before stream watching started up. More XCom 2 at some point when I’ve done more customisation. It’s a good challenging strategy game and it’s great to see your people progressing through.

Oh and this also means that the Hello Kitty armour and weapon pattern mods are working again.

Talking of overwhelming wholesomeness …

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. A dazzlingly cute young lady stands in a city scene. She is in front of a cherry blossom tree with silvery pink/purple leaves that almost match her silver hair.
Baby Dragon Girl

I opened up Final Fantasy XIV again. I went away from this partly because my shoulder was giving me trouble but mostly because I got heavily distracted into Star Trek Online. I kicked the ST Online habit, mostly because I was getting bored with where its stories were going as well as the game mechanics at maximum level. It felt like you were doing the busywork that increases as you level more instead of enjoying the storylines.

Final Fantasy XIV is definitely an incredibly cute game. It’s engineered that way. I’m mostly retracing steps from my first character, albeit with a tank class instead of a damage class. Definitely enjoying it though.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is standing up straight in a soft lit dream sequence. She wears a bronze metal chestplate with shoulder pauldrons, otherwise it's black leather gloves and black fabric trousers. She has a red Pointy Hat.
POINTY HAT

It’s going to take something good to pry that hat out of her hands. As Keldra Gondanne is a tank character, I’m looking forwards to finding some super shiny armour for this dangerous dragonlady. Maybe when I get to the part of the game where she can learn blacksmithing and armour crafting.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is in the centre of shot in the background. 4 men are pictured left to right. A to be recurring character stands to the right with white hair and a black outfit with white sleeves. The dialogue says "Thank you. If you hadn't come along, those bastards would surely have slaughtered us all"
One merchant at a time

Just helping out there.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. Interior scene. My character and another lady are standing at a pedestal. A small robot thing is also there.
Beware the little guy

Game pops up fun stuff and definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously, which just adds to the charm. It’s pretty free with what you can do in game as well. Now my character has gotten to level 15 in the main “job”, she’s free to join other guilds too. So there’s the crafting guild, in this case jewelcrafting, gathering guilds … and other classes too. If you put enough time into the game, you could have one character that could be tank, melee damage, ranged damage, caster damage, healer … There’s lots of potential there.

And a storyline I’m looking forwards to playing.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character (in pointy hat), is standing by a balcony. There are bushes in pots to her left and right. In the background is a cityscape. There is a waterfall to the right and a set of domed buildings in the background.
City Housing Area

Some day, I’ll investigate the housing.

It’s been good being back in the game and being charmed by the characters and the story quests.

Did I mention doxxing above somewhere ? There’s something I really want to whinge about. But I can’t because if I do, you can find out stuff about me that I’d rather remain confidential. That’s so annoying isn’t it ? Venting denied on this occasion.

There’s also been the inevitable Mars Horizon (I have all the achievements now!) and Motorsport Manager. I’m close to the final phase of the GT car part of my current campaign. When they’re built up to maximum, I’ll quit that team and move on to the endurance racing.

Right ! To the book.

Have a great rest of weekend everyone, back soon.

Stay safe, be well.

Cluttered Thoughts

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February 28, 2021

4:31 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve been looking at the time since last post happened and wondering … what’s been happening since last time ? It’s being a weird time for things like that. We’re in our lockdown bubbles waiting for the numbers to go down, while thinking of things that will happen when we come out again.

To be honest, I thought we’d be out by now. Or at least early enough to be able to do Mothers Day type things. Perhaps in the USA where it’s in May. Our one is March in the UK. The first lockdown and all the fear around that last year was all enveloping but florist deliveries were still happening so we were able to still mark the day even if no visiting was happening.

Not sure what will happen this year. I’d rather not drive this car too much over the next month, with the next one coming “soon” (not had a date yet). Mind you, I did have to give it an extended run on Friday because the message “Hybrid System Stopped” popped up when I turned it on which I think is a confused message for “12V battery low”.

Thumbnail pic ?

Game Screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The Anaconda ship is pointing towards left of screen, the two engines at the back are emitting cones of blue flame. The background is a diffuse blue, with an eye like black hole upper middle.
Very blue

I was out and about again for a couple of sessions since last post. That was the Distant View in Blue, a small nebula with a black hole in the centre. This is probably a black hole that would be actively consuming the matter around it, which would normally mean a bright accretion disc as the matter is accelerated to near the speed of light as it goes into tighter and tighter orbits. Elite doesn’t do the accretion discs, just very spectacular gravitational lensing.

Car stuff ? My car’s a hybrid, so it has two batteries. It has a small 12V battery like most cars, plus it has the 200+ V traction battery that supplies the motors. (Power is Volts x Current, high Volts means less Current means thinner wires … is a big oversimplification!) While the traction battery will come back at the same charge level after a few weeks, the 12V battery is what actually starts the car up before handing over to the big one. That drains over time and then Odd Things start happening when it’s getting to lower charge. That’s not an issue, just means you might need a jump start in order to turn the car on if you’re barely using the car.

Because you know, pandemic stuff and not going to places. The quick fix is to go up the motorway for a junction, come back and realise you forgot your wallet before you go into the supermarket for supplies … because realising you forgot your wallet while in the supermarket would have been really embarrassing. (I realised just before I got to the motorway !)

Map picture. A capture from ED Discovery, showing a map of our galaxy from above. Overlaid on it are different colour blocks for the regions of space and there is an extensive white line showing my course.
Going long distance

It’s not like you need to drive to the end of the universe to charge up the battery or anything.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The Anaconda starship is shown from the port side, pointing towards left of shot. It is showing off the battered looking paint scheme of purple highlights over mainly grey hull.
Where are the stars ?

Literally no stars there. The ongoing travels of the Searching for Dragons has taken her to the extreme opposite end of the galaxy from us, beyond Beagle Point and on to Salome’s Reach. That’s the farthest away from Earth you can get in the game.

There are no stars there … Literally because there are no stars in the galaxy beyond that point. (Or maybe I’m hiding one behind the ship !)

Back to reality though. It’ll be good to be getting out and about again. There’s people I haven’t seen in far too long. It’d be good to see them again. It was good getting a message from someone I used to work with (ish!) who is looking at getting into making videos. About actual real life things ! With a face ! (I’d never do that … Sleepy Face is bad). Here’s a channel link. It was good watching that first video last night.

I dropped my channel fairly early. I did enjoy the learning how to do the videos, seeing the production process through from planning (yes there was a semblance of planning), to set up, into production and direction, editing and release. But I also realised that doing that along with a day job was not particularly viable. I do like watching the videos, playing the games, listening to music and hanging in with the streams … you can’t do that at the same time as recording. You need the quiet time which means none of all that other stuff.

But I can still remember a lovely HeyChrissa lady saying I need to do more videos because she liked my voice. It’s a shame she retreated from the public life and stopped doing the streaming, she was a good egg there but it was causing mental distress so she had to walk away from that life.

Gosh, this is a bit rambly isn’t it.

XCom2 is also happening on and off …

Game screenshot. XCom 2. A propaganda poster with caption "Off our planet. It shows the squad. From left to right: A buzzcutted Fuzzy Freaks in purple carrying a sniper rifle. Maggie Luperza in mostly blue, with goggles above her eyes. Cyberkitten in green with a baseball cap and shades is pointing a huge gatling cannon at the camera. Outrider in a long coat and hood is looking at the camera through a gas mask. Gamingftl looks heroically on at the right side.
The squad is growing

Fun game. Although it can quickly turn murderous if the random number generator is feeling that way. Long game though, I’ll probably still be in this campaign for a while.

Finished another Mars Horizon run. I now hold all of the achievements in that game. I’ll be back for more at some point.

I haven’t been back in the Shipbreaker game yet, I’ll hold off until the update and progression reset. There are other games to play in that time.

I’m also thinking of outside computer games … Seeing Lego bring out a Remote Control Buggy made me remember playing with those way back. I only had a cheap 2 wheel drive buggy but it was fun putting it together, taking it apart, putting it together again and driving it around the place. Good times.

I’d like to do that again, although not with the Lego one. Too heavy, delicate and slow. I’ll get a proper one when things open up again and I’ve made steps to seeing what clubs are around.

I was collecting the Nitro RC (I think that’s what it was called) magazine thing where you build up a remote controlled car every week or month. I stopped that though because it was a seriously cheap thing which meant easy cheap manufacture and an insanely difficult build. The biggest problem I hit with it was misalignment caused by the builder being expected to thread holes with self tapping screws cutting the threads into plastic, instead of the holes being pre-prepared.

More research required I think.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the Anaconda starship pointing towards the right of shot, dominating the lower half of the picture. Her top side is angled towards the camera showing the colouration of purple on star bright white. The galactic ribbon of stars is in the background.
Looking back at the galaxy

Sooner or later, we’ll be able to freely and confidently go out and about again. That shot is from the other side of the ship taken from the same place as the other one. It has me looking back at the galaxy from the edge.

Last thoughts for this one … the internet is taking away some of the isolation in these times. It’s weird, I remarked over a Skype call that our little group of the team at work is probably talking even more than at the office. Because talking as much would have been disruptive in the office, the Skype chats don’t interrupt anybody.

What would we have been doing 10 or more years ago before youtube, Netflix and so on ? Probably watching a lot of dvds and reading books and overloading the texting system to stay in touch.

Anyway,

Hang in there. Be well, stay safe.

Reality’s being weird, time for an alternate ?

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January 11, 2021

9:50 pm

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Hi everyone,

This reality’s being pretty weird isn’t it. Especially in the last year. But I really don’t want to talk about the real world stuff. You’re probably being bombarded with far too much information about that from all sides and most of it is scary. Or feeling like it’s from a really bad Hollywood movie.

Talking of bad movies … The Midnight Sky was a painful one to sit through earlier. It’s not that it’s bad (ok, it has a LOT of bad sci-fi in it), it’s just … boring and depressing. Go watch something else :-D. mind you, i was watching it because I was avoiding playing the more active games after work today due to a bad back. (Bad sleep last night due to pizza consequences)

Alternate reality ?

Game screenshot. A Cosmonaut on the Moon with a USSR flag and a Russian lander module. Earth is in the background.
That’s … different

I’ve been doing another Mars Horizon campaign. I did my first with the Japanese, then did a version of NASA. This time around it’s the Russians. It’s good to see different types of spaceship represented in the game. There’s an excellent Spacepedia in there as well, with many entries about historic, present and potential future spacecraft. After skipping through on my first games, I’ll have to give it a more thorough read.

Game screenshot. In orbit over the Moon is a Russian Soyuz and Lander spacecraft. Earth is in the background.
Don’t forget the flag !

That’s going backwards in the mission a bit, showing what they think the Russian version of Apollo would have looked like. Essentially, a Soyuz with a lander on the top.

The launch vehicle is pretty special too :

Game screenshot. Russian N1 / L3 rocket on the ground on a launch pad surrounded by thinner towers.
Long and pointy

That’s the N1 booster coupled with the L3 upper stage. 4 attempts were made historically to fly this combination, none succeeded. (My alternate reality people did better). The wiki page that I’ve linked there shows a vastly complicated system that we only knew about in the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union, such was the secrecy of the project.

Another Soviet programme in the game is the Buran space shuttle.

Game screenshot. Russian space shuttle on the launch pad connected to the Energia rocket. Ice is falling off as the engines just fired.
Buran and Energia

Whereas the NASA Space Shuttle was mostly recoverable (was the fuel tank recoverable ?), Buran sacrificed the Energia booster. Mind you, Energia was also a potential very heavy lift rocket that could have lifted other payloads into orbit. Buran flew once, as an unmanned test vehicle. Here’s a wiki link for Buran. It looked a lot like the Space Shuttle, which owes a lot to the requirements in the design. Both needed to fly a certain size of payload and then the wings follow the requirements of needing to re-enter. A major difference with Buran is that the shuttle itself had no engines, it depended entirely on the Energia Booster to lift it into orbit.

Sadly though, Buran only flew the once in 1988 and the prototype was shown at the Paris Air Show (on the back of an An-225) in 1989 before it disappeared into a hangar for the next 13 years. The hangar collapsed in 2002 and that was the end of Buran.

It and the Shuttle were a victim of misguided design, although the Shuttle was flown far longer than it probably should have been. Both spacecraft have superfluous wings, aimed for a cross range requirement which was never used. (They’re capable of going up, going round Earth once and the wings allow them to them land at the same place even though the Earth has rotated beneath them – for sneaky missions). Soyuz has proved to be a fair more useful spacecraft.

I’ve been enjoying an alternate history game with Mars Horizon this time. I’d thoroughly recommend picking it up for its mix of history, competitiveness (the other agencies will keep you on your toes) and I’ve found it a really satisfying game to play. It’s less demanding of my currently limited hand and arm capability. And I’m looking forward to the next game, which will be with the Chinese and possibly an attempt at beating the game on Very Hard.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The Anaconda space ship is on the left, pointing away from the camera towards a blue and purple nebula shaped like a rotated C.
To the clouds !

And in another alternate history … Elite’s future is pretty grim dark but at least it has easy access to space. I had a little session over the weekend, making my way further around the galaxy. I’m at the top part now …

Website screenshot. A map of the galaxy with a very long green indication showing where I have been.
Follow the green line

I’ve got a bit further since then. The next few waypoints will take me to the top of that map again to Salome’s Reach, 65,647 light years away from Earth. There are a few things to see along the way though …

Game screenshot. The spaceship is coming towards the camera. A large sun is partially visible at the bottom of the image. 2 suns,, 1 large and 1 smaller are behind the spaceship.
Toasty

Sometimes the game likes to surprise you. You go from system to system through hyperspace, dropping out at the most significant stellar object. In this case, the system entry star was the one at the bottom of the picture.

It’s not quite that simple though … As you drop out of hyperspace, you go through any stars that might be behind it. That definitely leads to a wake up call.

Game screenshot. Spaceship facing a black hole. The normally thin galactic ribbon has been spread across the screen due to lensing distortion effects.
Approaching the Gates of Apzu

There’s another black hole there, with the extreme lensing effects.

Game screenshot. We can see the top of the spaceship with a glow for radiators. The background is dominated by lensing effects of a black hole distorting the galactic ribbon.
Knocking on the Gates of Apzu

Of course I took a closer look.

Game screenshot. The black hole is distorting the vision around it again. A dark spaceship is coming towards the camera.
Retreating from the Gates of Apzu

Before enjoying how the lensing effects retract back to normality as you fly away.

Game screenshot. The spaceship is landed on a flat plain with small rocks. The buggy is in front. A planet with a ring is visible centre left. There is a small star top middle right. There is a moon top centre that is just showing a small reflection from the star.
Looking at giants

And then it didn’t take much longer for me to find a suitable spot to end the session at.

Oh ! Been reading books too. Absolution Gap was a bit of a struggle but Murderbot 3 flew by, as is Light of Impossible Stars.

More about the books in a later post. Gonna try and read lots of books again this year :-).