games - Sleepypete's Pillow

A year of lockdown, also jabby

by Sleepypete

March 24, 2021

8:49 pm

Comments Off on A year of lockdown, also jabby

Uncategorized

games, stayathome, vaccine

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

by Sleepypete

March 15, 2021

8:10 pm

Comments Off on Car’s Haunted

Uncategorized

games, stayathome

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)

by Sleepypete

March 6, 2021

10:44 pm

Comments Off on Final Doxx Fantasy and (Spaceships)

Uncategorized

ffxiv, games

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

by Sleepypete

February 28, 2021

4:31 pm

Comments Off on Cluttered Thoughts

Uncategorized

games, lockdown, stayathome

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 ?

by Sleepypete

January 11, 2021

9:50 pm

Comments Off on Reality’s being weird, time for an alternate ?

Uncategorized

games, internet spaceship, rocket science, rockets

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 :-).

Impending New Year

by Sleepypete

December 30, 2020

10:15 pm

Comments Off on Impending New Year

Uncategorized

games, music, stayathome

Hello everyone,

The offline time went to plan, was a good little bubbly meeting up north with the mum over Christmas. We were both in Tier 3 areas at that point so it was a case of a support bubble meet up, which is still ok at the moment. Well, for a couple of hours time and then we’re into Tier 4 due to this new more infectious variant of Bug.

Thumbnail time !

I think that’s enough about what’s happening in the world for now, although I will mention that I’m good for food again for a little while. My plan all along with this Thing has been to wait it out, reducing my chances of getting it by not being around people much. That might be leading to agoraphobic tendencies though, so I’ll need to sort that when the time comes.

It was curious coming back on Saturday. Storm Bella was predicted and I could see the signs of it on my trip back. There were warnings from quite far away saying that the older Severn Bridge (it’s the M48) was closed and the I think the newer bridge was closed overnight. I follow the traffic advice people on Twitter and they give a decent amount of info for when there were issues on the roads.

Like … the road I would normally come back on but avoided on Saturday ! I have a good option to come off the motorway early and take a more chilled out route back. The car was starting to feel a bit lively in building wind, so I took that more chilled out route instead of a section that’s very exposed to the wind. And … apparently a lorry was blown over overnight. That’s the real worry. Cars will be fine but you definitely feel the effects when you’re going past lorries and going into and out of their wind shadow.

The farm shop service station was almost deserted too, so I’m on the sherbets again :-D.

Been on the travels in the internet spaceship as well, steadily making my way around the outside of the galaxy. There’s still lots of distance to go. At my next main waypoint, I’ll be almost 66,000 light years through a 280,000 light year trip. With lots of pretty sights along the way …

And new habitable worlds which have the “Discovered by …” with my name on them now.

Still on leave at the moment, hence the internet spaceships … I’ve also been checking out Prey :

This one is a super atmospheric game, another one that leads you into what’s going on in stages. You wake in your apartment, take a helicopter to the Transtar offices for behavioural testing … and then bad things start happening. Turns out there’s a bit more going on than was apparent. I’m only 2 hours in at the moment. Looks great, the lighting there is amazing and the decor definitely goes for art deco gaudy.

There’s also the arrival of Per Aspera :

If you look closely enough there is a Beagle

This one puts you in the position of an AI, tasked to set up an initial colony on Mars and then to make the planet habitable. It’s a curious game. It has massive scope and takes on a number of the terraforming ideas from the slow and prudent approaches (greenhouse gases, melting of poles etc) to the quick rash approaches of bombarding the planet with asteroids and using nukes to speed up the process.

Yep. That’s a mine. A couple of early attempts were reset due to not knowing what was going on, or a lack of critical resources. This is one of those that takes a lot of time for things to happen, which can be good for those poorly arms of mine.

I’m not sure if it’ll be one that holds my attention for that long but it’s been good so far. (I may be heading back into Mars Horizon, that game is highly addictive !)

I managed to finish off reading Absolution Gap too … The middle book was great ! This end book was a bit meh. It felt like 500 pages of set up and no clear idea of where they were going with it, on the end book of a trilogy. The next Alastair Reynolds I’ll read will be Shadow Captain (cheers CK !), which I’m hoping will be an excellent follow up to Revenger. Not yet though, the next book is Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, the third book of the Murderbot Diaries and I highly enjoyed the first chapter.

On buying stuff … Steam sales are on at the moment and I may have had a few acquisitions … I enjoyed watching videos of XCom Chimera Squad earlier in the year, it’s a nice evolution of the usual XCom tactical action thing. I’ve also acquired the lovely pre WW2 Over The Alps. It’s a fun spy narrative adventure game. I heavily enjoyed watching the Fuzzy streams of this earlier in the year.

And I really must add a list of links in.

I also picked up Core Defense and the Hexcells series. More games may appear … I’ve also been indulging in other sales and I’ve enjoyed listening to Lisa Hannigan’s At Swim and Katie Melua’s Album No 8. More took more time to arrive, including more from Katie Melua, one from Mike Oldfield and the latest Ellie Goulding.

I must do a music post at some point.

I better leg it now though … I’m seeing more reports appearing of people I either know personally or know through forums/discord saying that they’ve tested positive. I was pretty careful with my bubble trip with self isolating, outside of the AA man thing and picking up a few things afterwards. But this new variant is pretty scary with how the numbers are exploding.

Hope everyone comes out ok.

Be well, stay safe everyone.

Day 24 Deus Ex Vader Jumper

by Sleepypete

December 24, 2020

1:41 pm

Comments Off on Day 24 Deus Ex Vader Jumper

Uncategorized

deus ex, games

Hello everyone,

Day 24 and the end of this series ! It’s been a fun series to do, looking back at some old games and gaming history. And the models have been pretty good this year too.

What’s behind the door today ?

There we go, Darth and his favourite jumper. It’s been a good advent calendar this time around, some old classics, some more unusual like the Lucrehulk battleship and the A Wing, a new favourite with the Razor Crest (not watched Mandalorian) and a few really cunning ones like the Tauntaun and the shield generator.

What’s the game there in the background ? I actually bought that one in 2012 not long after my previous machine, Pumpkin, was built. Best Buy were still operating in the UK then before being undercut out of business. It’s Deus Ex Human Revolution and one of the best shooty games in my collection.

You start off as the security chief of Sarif Industries and before you know it, the company’s been invaded, the top scientists have been murdered (or have they) and you’ve been left legless and armless and near death, only to be rebuilt into a half man, half machine version of your former self.

Fast forward six months and you’ve been recalled to deal with another invasion at an outlying facility and you launch off into investigating an increasing conspiracy. Along the way, you help out with the inevitable side quests and bounce between various locations.

And lots of flavour stuff on the tellies and news letters is left around the place too, with radios littered around the levels that I must listen to at some point. There’s lots of attention to detail here …

One thing though about these games is that while it’s possible to go through, all guns blazing, the game isn’t really supposed to be played like that. Bullets from the enemies hurt a lot … So the idea is to steadily go through the levels, eliminating enemies undetected (and you get a bonus for just making them unconscious too).

Deus Ex Human Revolution is a game I’ll keep going back to occasionally, it was good to revisit it again in the last few months.

The follow up game, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, takes place a couple of years after this one. There’s a prologue that sees you being sent in to a desert hotel to extract an operative that’s in trouble.

The world situation is dealing with fallout from the end of the first game, where people with augmentations are subjected to a form of digital apartheid. They’re forced to relocate to segregated living areas amidst further separation and discrimination.

They definitely upped the ante with the graphics, one thing to look out for being the increase in detail on display. That’s having the freedom to make levels in daylight, for all that lovely light, shadow and reflection detail. It’s also being able to add in curves to the levels. Prague of DXMD feels a lot more like a proper city than the Detroit and Hengsha levels in DXHR.

That came with a cost though, it took me 4 years to go back to this one because I bounced off the game thoroughly when it came out due to crash bugs. (The lighting didn’t like the AMD card I had at the time)

It looked great in the night time too.

I enjoyed this one a lot when I played it back in May and going back to DXHR again was partly so I could remind myself of what had gone before before tackling another run at the newer game. Hopefully we see a third game in the series, the first two Adam Jensen games were pretty good and I’m intrigued to see where they would have taken the story.

There have been other Deus Ex games over the years, DXHR was not the first … I’ve talked about these before but here’s the rough timeline :

2027 Deus Ex : The Fall. We don’t talk about this game.

2027 later – Deus Ex Human Revolution : Adam Jensen’s first game.

2029 Deux Ex Mankind Divided : Adam Jensen’s second game.

2052 Deus Ex : the original game, released in June 2000.

2072 Deus Ex Invisible War, which is another game we don’t really talk about.

I should probably have more of a look at the timeline sometime. It’s time to sign off for at least a few days though. Doing a post a day can be pretty wearing, although it’s been great talking about the old games again. In the meantime,

Have a great christmas everyone, such as it is in these weird times.

Stay safe, be well.

Day 23 ! Home of Darth

by Sleepypete

December 23, 2020

9:44 pm

Comments Off on Day 23 ! Home of Darth

Uncategorized

advent, games, space

Hello everyone,

Day 23, what’s behind the door ?

Two models today, the frontage of Darth Vader’s palace place and a tiny little TIE craft.

And a return of the Master of Orion 2 cd … I meant to talk about these games a while ago but got sidetracked. There are a few games to talk about today, first a bit of fantasy.

This one is Master of Magic, an all time legendary classic from the 90s again. This one was a real headache to run … As well as needing 4MB of system memory to give you enough Expanded Memory, it needed a huge amount of Conventional Memory too. It’s really good that those terms have been consigned to the dustbin of history and we don’t need to think of them any more !

So, what’s the game ? Think Civilisation. But add in magic and a fantasy world. You play one of 5 wizards, aiming to be the first to learn and cast the Spell of Mastery, at which point all of your competitors would be banished from the realm and you’d win. You could also banish them the traditional way by storming their castles. Instead of different civilisations with minor differences, you could play as Humans, Elves, Orcs, Halflings, Dark Elves and so on. The differences were much more pronounced, with certain races having buildings locked away from them. There were also 5 colours of magic too, which was probably inspired by the Magic the Gathering card game.

No one refuses the Girl Scout Cookie Squad

It also had a nice little tactical battle sequence, which was another major plus that set it aside from the Civilisation games. It’s a wonder that there has never been a Master of Magic 2, because this game had absolute legend status in its day.

Next up is Master of Orion (Moo).

This one was a space strategy and one of the earliest of its genre on PC to break through. You colonised stars, created fleets and attempted to dominate the galaxy again. One curious wrinkle was that the tech tree was randomised for each game, with some techs being locked out. That introduced a certain amount of variation between games. Another classic of its day and the follow up was Master of Orion 2 (Moo2).

I see someone was adopting my favourite colour in these games, the blood red banner. Whereas Moo allowed you to build incredibly massive fleets with up to 32,000 ships in a stack (each capable of firing multiple warhead missiles), Moo2 had a fleet point mechanic. The limit is off to the right there, the 23 ships owned (50 ships supported). Bigger ships needed more fleet points. Moo2 also allowed extra food grown on one planet to be moved by freighter to hungry planets.

Moo had some aspects which were better but Moo2 was the game I was hooked on for a couple of decades until Stellaris came along.

We don’t talk about Master of Orion 3.

There’s a new Master of Orion game out as well, I was too addicted to Stellaris to properly check that one out but … there’s a Steam sale on at the moment …

On Stellaris …

I still go back to Stellaris, although I don’t think it’s quite the game it used to be. Complication has been added, which is ok if the AI is equipped to play that complication. It’s felt like the AI might have been left behind a bit.

That said though, it’s still an incredibly good space strategy game.

I think I need to hit post now though (getting late !).

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Day 22 Stormies ! And shooty games

by Sleepypete

December 22, 2020

7:50 pm

Comments Off on Day 22 Stormies ! And shooty games

Uncategorized

advent, games, star wars

Hello everyone,

Had a bit of drama yesterday … The plan was to get a couple of things before Xmas. In particular, a card and to top up the fuel tank. Things did not go to the plan.

So, TLDR, my car is a hybrid and has two batteries. When it’s on, it runs off the big traction battery. This isn’t a problem, it holds the capacity for a pretty long time. However, to start up the car, it uses a 12V battery. This can go flat after a while … It’s charged up off the main battery but if you’ve only done under 2000 miles in a year (pandemic things), then the 12V doesn’t get the chance to replenish itself.

And so I couldn’t get into the car last night. It’s a quick 5 minute fix by the AA man to sort it (they arrived within 10 minutes of a call today, I was proper shocked and impressed). Good job AA man. I have a Tool now though that’ll mean I can bootstrap the car on myself if it does it again.

This did, sadly, mean I had to People again tonight. Oh well. The feeling of being wary around other people has increased with the news of the Brexit mutation … But enough of the apocalypse, what’s behind the door ?

Stormtrooper today ! A traditional one too from the original movies.

I was going to talk about some more important entries in gaming history today … The game in the box is Halflife but I’m going to start with a couple of others.

The first Doom game came out in 1993 and kickstarted a revolution in PC gaming. Let’s take a look :

The first game these guys did was Wolfenstein 3d but Doom was the one that took off. One reason was that a third of the game was released as Shareware, so it quickly got copied and passed around on floppy discs. (Yep. No cd’s yet). But the massive other reason was that this game had networked multiplayer, which took multiplayer gaming out of the realm of text based Multi User Dungeons and into immediate first person deathmatches, creating a legend.

Looks crude … but it had enough to keep people happily blasting at each other. So .. Doom, probably one of the most important games in computer gaming history. I played my fair share of it too, when I wasn’t in Master of Magic, Master of Orion or Tie Fighter.

Next up is Dark Forces, a Star Wars game following the adventures of Kyle Katarn. This first game was another first person shooter with an innovation and a sign of things to come (it was the first game needing 8MB of system memory).

Actually two innovations this time. The first was a shield which would recharge but the massive one was being able to look up and down. Doom was restricted purely to shooting flat, although there was up and down in the levels (I think !). Dark Forces was followed by Dark Forces 2 Jedi Knight, which introduced lightsabers and advanced the graphics into the polygon era. (Quake started that).

The next major innovation and the cd in the box was Half Life … This game is another one of the legends.

Half Life saw you appearing at the Black Mesa research facility as a new researcher. They hurry you along to the test chamber, where you push a trolley into the Arcy Sparky thing and then all hell breaks loose and bugs are jumping on to your friends’ heads and eating their brains. One innovation with Half Life was I think smooth transitions between levels with no loading screens. Previously, games like this had been broken up into levels.

Modern games are a bit of a mix here. Some manage to do their thing with no transitions, others keep in the transitions for memory reasons and others are instanced. So World of Warcraft would have a loading screen if you fast travel or if you go from one continent to another, the loading screen is the instance swapping over. Elite Dangerous swaps you between instances while you’re going through hyperspace between systems.

Back to Half Life … this one had a decent story running through it too. As did Half Life 2, which brought us the Source Engine which was then adopted for projects like Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.

I wonder whether we’ll ever see Half Life 3 ?

What’s my next game in this style ? I finished playing Deus Ex Human Revolution the other day, so I’ll be switching over to something different “soon” … I think the favourites are between Alien Isolation and Prey. Here’s the Alien game :

The look of this game is incredible, as is the atmosphere. It’s one where I’d want to have the external noises down to a minimum.

And then there’s Prey …

This one excels in the atmosphere … Anything could be a mimic, waiting for you to turn your head away so it can jump at you.

Very tense.

Time to sign off for now though, stay safe, be well.

Day 21 ! And it’s aliens …

by Sleepypete

December 21, 2020

5:38 pm

Comments Off on Day 21 ! And it’s aliens …

Uncategorized

advent, games, star wars

Hello everyone,

Day 21 … Shortest day of the year. And :

Special snow man Gonk droid today. I wonder if they’ve switched to covering a few old favourites now for the last few doors.

That’s what I’m doing now with the games, there’s a few that I want to cover before the series comes to a close. For today, it’s the XCom / UFO Enemy Unknown series … This started in 1994 with Julian Gollop’s UFO Enemy Unknown, another one from the very prolific studios who had Microprose as a publisher.

The game starts you off on 1 Jan, 1999. UFOs have been sighted in the skies and strange abductions are becoming more common. The nations of Earth decide they need to answer this new threat and the secretive XCom agency is created. There can only be one leader of XCom …

The game is divided into a Geoscape section, where you manage your base, your people, the research and the production, culminating in attempts to intercept UFOs and send troops over to check them out. And then there is the ground assault section where you send your people in. The above pic has them about to knock on the door of a small scout UFO.

A hallmark of these games is that they gradually ramp up the strength and menace of the aliens and you need to be able to keep up with the research to allow your people to stay having a chance at defeating them. The game also included a fairly sophisticated seeming line of sight and light model, so if you went into a ground mission in the dark, enemies that could see in the dark could pick off your people.

Oh and it was also incredibly tense … aided by futuristic styled music.

UFO Enemy Unknown had a sequel called Terror From The Deep, which moved the aliens from the sky and had them menacing the oceans instead. (Never played this one).

The cd in the picture is for XCom 3 Apocalypse, which was based in a megacity instead of encapsulating the world. That megacity felt more alive though.

The city was filled with factions, who would get upset if you ignored aliens knocking on their door. You needed some of the factions to sell you kit, so if they got too upset then they’d stop selling you goodies.

The aliens were very different too, with brainsuckers going to a few varieties of soldier alien and the feared Popper who would dash up to your people and explode.

I’m not sure if I remember the tension quite so much in XCom Apocalypse but a real time mode added nicely to its gameplay and was the only counter I knew for the Poppers. (Firing squad massed fire tactics !) There was a neat art-deco look for everything as well in this game which set it aside nicely from the others.

The next one in the series to be released was XCom Interceptor.

This one was set in space, with you being in charge of an increasingly wide network of stations that were there to mine materials to go towards building the Mega City in Apocalypse. Aliens appear again, so it’s up to your people to go out there and shoot them down. One major change here was that instead of being a passive overview commander, you were one of the pilots. I don’t think this worked and it was probably a big mistake to do so. The space combat engine was nice … but it was too fast (as a veteran of the Tie Fighter game) and had bugs. I didn’t finish Interceptor.

The original series was fizzling out at this stage and the eagerly anticipated XCom Alliance was cancelled before release with the bones being turned into some other game that got the XCom tag thrust upon it (Enforcer), much to the chagrin of the fans of the series.

Since then, there has been a fan made recreation called Xenonauts. I watched a Scott Manley series on this and they did a great job updating the UFO EU mechanics and expanding the equipment available. Haven’t played it. There was also a spiritual successor trilogy in the UFO Aftermath series. I looked at Aftermath, it was actually pretty good. Not sure why I didn’t stick with it.

And then there was the reboot …

I haven’t got any action screenshots of this one sadly … This one came out in 2012 and was a great reboot for the series. It was a bit simplified, with squads of up to 6 instead of a maximum of 36 in Apocalypse but one of the things I read about this one was that they examined everything about the games and took out things that they didn’t think were fun.

It was great having such a big army in the original game but it did make the battles take longer than they needed to … and you’d have to fight an increasing number of fairly meaningless police action battles in order to keep up. They also simplified the air interception system.

And then came the latest game …

So, another small unit tactical combat thing. XCom 2 picked up the story a decade or so after XCom 1. Earth lost … in a big way. And you are expected to be the leader of a resistance that saves the day.

One of the strengths of these games is the customisation …

That one was going to get “Truthseeker” added as a nickname as soon as it let me.

Yep. That’s what she’d go by when she wasn’t using the name HeyChrissa.

I’ve been thinking about going back into the XCom games … although I’ll stay with the new ones and keep the nostalgia of the old ones intact. That might happen sooner rather or later because Per Aspera isn’t really working out (it has bugs it shouldn’t have).

So there we go ! A massively important series of games where you’re out there sorting out the alien threat and saving the Earth. There was also XCom Declassified, a shooter style game. Must actually play that. The latest is XCom Chimera Squad, which I am highly likely to get in the impending Steam Sales.

I think that’s it for me today. Have fun everyone, stay safe, be well. See you tomorrow.