Hello everyone,
I’ve missed posting again ! To be honest, I’m pretty burned out at the moment and I’m really looking forward to having the Xmas break off to try and recharge the brain a bit. Perhaps I actually need (hushed voice) an actual away from home holiday. I don’t think I’ve had something that counts like that since (checks photos) 2013. I was suffering from the issues with my outsides then but it was before it turned really bad. I’d been avoiding going to hotels since it went really bad until around 2019 ish. (I was leaking a bit too much).
Haha, that might have been a bit oversharing for the starting paragraph 🙂 But I think it’s part of why I’m suffering mentally at the moment. When I’m active, I can shift into that faster thinking gear, it’s just taking more of a kick to get me in that at the moment and I’m exhausted as soon as I close up the work laptop every day. Wait … thumbnail pic ?
That’s from X4:Foundations and … the dwagon on there isn’t a photoshopping. I’ve not looked at this game too much so far due to a couple of reasons but I couldn’t resist making something Very Me after seeing a custom logo option in the various menus. Elite only has a small selection of decal logos that you can add to ships and I wouldn’t want to have any of them on the ships.
I might brighten it up a bit though. The default logos in game are all white monochrome, which I tried to follow with the edit of the Pizza Dwagon but I think it’s ended up more as shades of grey instead of a proud logo that stands out to be recognised by people trying out the interstellar pizza delivery service.
Moving swiftly on …
I acquired X4 because of a rising dissatisfaction with Elite Dangerous. Elite is a wonderful screenshot generator but it needs a lot of issues fixing, issues that were introduced as part of the Odyssey update. I can’t see much point in playing the earlier Horizons edition any more, I’d rather stick to the new version. One of the issues is the lighting … I’d find a promising place to make camp at the end of a session, arrive and find that the lighting issue kicks in and you can’t actually see anything.
The criteria is : Find a gas giant with rings and a landable moon. If the moon has an atmosphere, that’s a bonus. And then I’ll head over there and try to land so the gas giant is on the horizon.
The pictures look great when you can find them … but when new bugs come into the game faster than the old bugs get fixed, you have to wonder whether it’s worth spending more time in the game, especially when all of the objectives I have (but one) in the game are completed. The only remaining thing to do that I’m bothered about is to own one of the Fleet Carriers as a mobile base …. but those require a decent investment of time in order to fund them. (Although apparently you can sit in an asteroid belt having an autobattling ship that earns credits at a happy rate – that’s not the kind of gameplay I’m interested in though).
X4 is the fourth game in a sequence of space flight games. It’s always been a very arcadey style of space combat sim, which isn’t a bad thing as far as gameplay goes. One thing it does have as well as the blasting is a more evolved economic model. So whereas Elite only has you flying one of the spaceships around, with the rest in the hangar, you can build up a business empire in X4. When you move up to a bigger or different ship, you can assign a non player character pilot to the old one and send it out to do more trading, mining or have them around to run shotgun on your freighters. Oh and you can build your space stations as well and manufacturing. Kinda like a friendlier and single player version of Eve Online.
I’ve bounced off the X series continually in the past though for multiple reasons, hopefully I can adapt more to X4. That said, the new little ship (unnamed so far) hasn’t left the pad yet partly because I’m still figuring out what you do in the game, mostly due to Pain.
Ouchies hit last week … I think the cold snap is one factor but I was also using the desktop mouse in the wrong position for an extended amount of time last week and that’s apparently wrecked me. Oops. If it’s on the upper deck, I use it with a straight arm which puts a lot of stress on my shoulder, putting an upwards and outwards pressure on it. And that’s still stiff after last week.
So I’ve been on the more hands off games with less movement of the mouse, like Motorsport Manager. Oh and perhaps a bit of Skyrim and Mars Horizon too as well as continuing the repairing things catharsis that Car Mechanic Simulator offers.
Advent ? No advent this year. It was a great theme to have over the last few years, with the themes giving me stuff to write about every day. But … the Lego models take up a decent amount of space, the advent calendar wasn’t particularly interesting this year (unlike the Xmas jumpers from last year) and I was definitely feeling that burn out.
Yep. Almost the time of year for Mini Eggs to be back in the shops.
Haven’t had snow yet here, unless it happened in a weekend morning and I completely missed it.
Racing ? I’ve been following the Grand Prix racing still. Something has to change there. At the front, you have a driver apparently hell bent on having people run into him and throughout the field you have them slowing to make space for fast runs, which is going to lead to a massive accident at some point. I think it’ll be a close finish at the end of this season and there will definitely be more controversy happening. And at some point, the patience has to run out with a driver who is definitely incredibly talented but has also been incredibly dangerous on the race track ever since he came into the sport.
I suspect you know which driver I mean there. I think it’ll be different again next year, with George Russell coming into the Mercedes team. Whereas Lewis Hamilton has the skill to avoid car damage when he’s been getting run off the road, I don’t think Russell does. There will be more accidents happening next year. But we’ll see there. Hopefully the new regulations next year improve the racing, although Formula 1 has usually been a processional activity where the cars can get close but not overtake on a lot of the tracks. It should be the fastest car and driver that wins and often that isn’t the case.
Something for those who say – “I watch it for the crashes”. Take a look at yourselves please. Those are real people in the cars. Hopefully the two Formula 2 drivers who were injured yesterday make full recoveries. Other drivers have not. Your entertainment should not come at the cost of those bringing it to you. I was wondering when the big crash would happen yesterday. The new Saudi circuit is the second fastest … with many blind corners. It’s not a question of if an accident will happen, it’s when.
I have a vague memory of Frank Williams and Patrick Head having to avoid traveling to Italy for a few years because they’d have been arrested on manslaughter charges (later cleared) in the aftermath of the Ayrton Senna death. I can see the new Saudi traffic as being a track that could potentially kill someone.
And that’s not what I call entertainment. I genuinely thought we’d lost a driver last year with Romain Grosjean’s miraculous escape from a fireball. Seeing that again on Drive to Survive brought out the feels again.
I’ll say it again there – our entertainment shouldn’t come at a cost to other people.
Haha, he says thinking of the Pixel People in the games. Perhaps we’re Pixel People in someone else’s game ?
Anyway, I think that’s more than enough metaphysics for my head tonight. Time to disappear back into book with the music on. It’s currently Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds and then I’ll be buying Leviathan Falls by James S. A. Corey, last of the Expanse books.
Have a great advent everyone, be well.