tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-367338922024-03-16T18:51:25.983+00:00Life is a Mind Bending PuzzleA blog about life, the universe and computer games. PC games mainly.mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09037758442729422620noreply@blogger.comBlogger1143125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-44018106568405129462023-10-08T17:50:00.004+00:002023-10-08T17:50:17.892+00:00Playing Ghost of Tsushima on a PC with Playstation Plus PremiumI have been experimenting with the premium tier of PlayStation Plus which allows streaming a limited selection of PlayStation 3 and 4 games to a PC. This allows non PlayStation owners to experience some of the platform's highly regarded exclusives. <div><br /></div><div>The up front cost involved the purchase of a second hand PS4 controller (€20) and a one month subscription to PlayStation Plus Premium (€16.99). The lower tiers of PlayStation Plus do not allow streaming. Although other controllers can be gotten to work the PS4 controller is highly recommended for maximum compatibility. Apparently even owners of newer PS5 controllers need hacks to get them running with the service. </div><div><br /></div><div>For some reason the PS Plus app requires the controller to have a wired connection even though I can connect it to the PC via Bluetooth and Steam recognises it just fine via wireless. Google and Reddit sent me down several rabbit holes trying to get the wireless connection to work but in the end I gave up and just went with the wire. Another niggle is that the app seems determined to route sound through the controller whenever possible (it has an earphone socket). This caused confusion as to why there was no source until I figured out what was going on. Once I figured it out it was easy enough to select the correct sound output via Windows sound settings but it is a nuisance having to do this every time I run the app. </div><div><br /></div><div>The app itself seems a lot more basic than Microsoft's Xbox. It just throws you into the list of games with very few settings or other features. However once I selected a game it loaded up pretty quickly and the streaming worked fine. I am on wifi but my connection is fairly solid 350 down, 50 up, Ping 10ms.</div><div><br /></div><div>Using Ghost of Tsushima as my test game it appears to stream in full HD and I guess the framerate is 30fps. It feels smooth and playable and the visuals are what I would expect from a PS4 era game. Ghosts uses the additional touch pad on the PS4 controller so it is a good test game to make sure everything is working. </div><div><br /></div><div>The selection of games feels smaller and less up to date than Microsoft's Game Pass service but there are some classics from the PS4 generation including Ghosts of Tsushima, Bloodborne, Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West and The Last of Us remastered. It also has a good selection of classics from older generations especially PS3 games. You can play a bunch of older God of War and Ratchet and Clank games for example even though the more recent entries are not available. </div><div><br /></div><div>As a PC gamer without a modern PlayStation I am pleased with what I have seen of the service so far. I do intend to try some of the platform exclusives during my one month subscription. Depending on how I get on I will either renew or let the sub lapse after that. The relatively basic app and its fussiness about controllers makes me think that PC gamers are not a key target for this service. It is just a bonus for PlayStation owners who might enjoy the added flexibility of playing some games on their PC. Nevertheless it does offer a rare opportunity for PC gamers to sample some otherwise exclusive games.</div><div><br /></div>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-85078841934830608312023-06-08T11:32:00.006+00:002023-06-08T11:33:22.186+00:00Elden Ring is better with magic<p> When I immersed myself in Elden Ring for several weeks back in January / February I invested in strength and tried to build a melee focussed character. Last week on a whim I reinstalled the game and started over as magic using glintstone sorcerer prioritising intelligence. Now I find I am progressing through the game far more quickly and enjoying the experience more. A lot of this is due to my familiarity with the game born from experience but I am enjoying the playstyle more as well. </p><p>Before I go much further I must address the elephant in the room. There is a section of the Elden Ring community who look down on magic as easy mode. They consider it an inferior playstyle to the carefully timed parrys, dodges and counters that are a hallmark of Souls games. I would like to think I am above being influenced by this kind of snobbery but that isn't entirely true. I am pretty sure that my decision to initially play as a melee character was influenced by a niggling feeling that that was the "right way" to play. It is also true that one of the reasons I now enjoy playing a mage more is because I am not very good at the precisely timed manoeuvres that melee combat requires. I am finding the game much easier being able to stand out of harms way and fling spells. </p><p>One of the oddest things about playing an intelligence focussed magic user is that my character is still very effective in melee. I have a nice uchigatana that I can equip because it has a low strength requirement. I put an ash of war on it that gives it a hefty chunk of magic damage that scales with intelligence so it hits very hard. I can't take hits because I am clad in light armour but dodging blows is more effective than tanking them so I still enjoy the odd melee tussle in between bouts of magic. My heavy armour / heavy weapon wielding melee character feels clunky in comparison. </p><p>Another significant difference from my first playthrough is the way I use my replenishment flasks. My armour wearing melee fighter took a lot of hits and had to prioritise health (HP) replenishing flasks of crimson tears at the expense of focus point (FP) restoring flasks of cerulean tears. This meant that I had to be stingy with special abilities that consume FP. My mage takes far fewer hits so I prioritise FP flasks and can use abilities much more freely. In fact I picked up a Blessed Dew talisman early on that slowly replenishes health. The replenishment rate is too slow to be much use during combat but serves to keep my health bar topped up while exploring. As a consequence I only carry one or at most two HP restoring flasks for emergencies when exploring and use the the rest of my flask slots for FP flasks. </p><p>The only downside to playing a mage is that it took surprisingly long to find new spells that were better or more interesting than the two spells I started out with as an astrologer. The single target Glintstone Pebble and multi target Glintstone arc are such a powerful combination that I still relied on them till at least level 30. I am almost 60 now, working my way through Caelid and I finally have a greater variety of spells to play with but it took quite a while. My current mainstay spells are magic glintblade (delayed action mana efficient homing spell), Loretta's great bow (high damage long distance sniper spell) and canon of Haima (an area of effect explosive damage spell that is great fun to use on groups of enemies). </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-24240030675203903852023-05-18T08:59:00.001+00:002023-05-18T08:59:32.869+00:00Reasons to start PC Gaming (From Reddit May 2023) <p>I have been playing PC games for more than thirty years and it is still my favourite hobby. Over that time I have regularly come across questions on forums asking why should someone game on PC rather than console. I have occasionally offered my own opinion on the matter as I did in the reddit comment below. Surprisingly my answer to the question hasn't changed much over they years. If I can find an older answer I gave to a similar question I might post that as well for comparison. </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="background-color: #f0f3fc; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Top reasons to start PC gaming:</span></p><ol style="background-color: #f0f3fc; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px;"><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-size: 1em !important; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">It is at least two hobbies in one. Tinkering with HW and Software and trying to get the most of out of limited HW is a whole game in itself. If you are nerdy enough you may enjooy it more than actually playing games.</p></li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-size: 1em !important; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">PC games are cheaper. AAA gams may start out the same price but prices fall quicker on PC and PC has an enormous back catalogue of free games. You can pick up classics for a few $. PC gamers can quickly amass a library of hundreds of games.</p></li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-size: 1em !important; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">Did I mention the enormous back catalogue of historic games. If you are interested in the history of gaming then PC is by far your best choice.</p></li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-size: 1em !important; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">Certain types of game are only available on PC or are just better on PC. Grand strategy and Simulation are obvious examples but the indie scene is also strong on PC.</p></li></ol><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">Reasons not to get into PC gaming:</p><ol style="background-color: #f0f3fc; color: #222222; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0.357143em 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px;"><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-size: 1em !important; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">PC Gaming hardware is expensive. A graphics card alone will cost you more than an entire console.</p></li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-size: 1em !important; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">If you are not a nerd and don't want to tinker with hardware and software you will probably have a bad time. You can buy decent pre-built machines but PC gaming is not always plug and play. You will hit eventually unexplained incompatibilities and crashes and unless you are least willing to google some answers you will be stuck.</p></li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-size: 1em !important; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">AAA games are often better supported on consoles. There is a long history of flaky PC ports. Sometimes they get fixed. Sometimes not.</p></li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-size: 1em !important; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">Many of the gaps between PC and consoles have shrunk in recent years bit in terms of performance and in terms or availability of games. The PS5 and XBox X are as powerful as a mid-range gaming PC. They both support legacy games after a fashion. They both have plenty of indie titles. There are ways to play older games more cheaply.</p></li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-size: 1em !important; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">If you already have a kickass TV and sound system set up you might want to game on it rather than spending extra cash on a PC monitor and speakers / headphones. Don't be fooled however. PC gaming monitors can be much higher quality than an average TV and even though the PC screen seems smaller you are sitting much closer to it so you actually see more. To put this in perspective console games usually have only a 60 degree field of view while PC games use 90 deg or more (except for lazy PC ports that are are stuck with 60 deg field of view which is a recipe for motion sickness). Also a decent set of headphones plugged into your PC will beat the best TV sound system you can buy.</p></li></ol><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">From my reply to a reddit post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/13khx9v/is_switching_to_pc_gaming_worth_it_nowadays/jkm10ui/</span></span></div>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-24305511286547813662023-05-06T08:49:00.002+00:002023-05-18T08:51:41.483+00:00Thoughts on the coronation of King Charles III of the United Kingdom and Other Commonwealth Realms<p> My father was born a subject of the British King George V. He died a citizen of a free republic the equal under law of any king. </p><p>As you might have guessed I am not in favour of hereditary Monarchy. I realise that the British Royal family is probably the world's greatest tourist attraction and the ballyhoo and romance surrounding them brings significant tangible and intangible benefits to the United Kingdom. Nevertheless the very idea of the royal family underpins a deeply ingrained system of hereditary privilege and power which in my opinion is anathema to a modern twenty first century free country. </p><p>There is a proposal that during the coronation ceremony today that the King's subjects watching from home can swear an oath of allegiance while sitting in front of their tellys. Needless to say the notion of people swearing oaths to their TV screens has provoked considerable derision even among fervent supporters of the royal family. There has even been several impolite suggestions of alternative <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/swear%20word">swear words</a> people would like to use. The officially recommended oath however is <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", Cambria, "Hoefler Text", Utopia, "Liberation Serif", "Nimbus Roman No9 L Regular", Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", Cambria, "Hoefler Text", Utopia, "Liberation Serif", "Nimbus Roman No9 L Regular", Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">‘I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God.'”</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Source Serif Pro, Cambria, Hoefler Text, Utopia, Liberation Serif, Nimbus Roman No9 L Regular, Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As a citizen of a free republic I will never swear allegiance to another human. I will offer them respect and even deference if they prove that they are worth it. I will also respect the position that they represent if it is warranted. I respect the position of King Charles III as a representative of a great country filled with many people I admire and some of whom I call my friends. </span></span></p><p>If the monarchy had any relevance in today's world the King should be swearing allegiance to the people not the other way around. </p><p> </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-71104890565636153132023-05-03T10:40:00.000+00:002023-05-03T10:40:55.097+00:00Ten Years ago on Life is a Mindbending PuzzleWhat was I writing about in April 2013? <a href="https://mindbendingpuzzles.blogspot.com/2013/04/">https://mindbendingpuzzles.blogspot.com/2013/04/</a><div><br /></div><div>I started the month complaining about the ever growing issue of DLC. Unlike most gamers of the time it wasn't the rip off factor that annoyed me it was the nuisance factor of there being too much of it. </div><div><br /></div><div>My second post that month was a long and thoughtful analysis of the demise of the PC. The PC proved more resilient than I expected at that time but it interesting that the PC market is again in sharp decline after a pandemic lock down inspired boost. One of my biggest concerns about a possible decline of the PC was whether or not I would still be able to play older games. It is interesting the the big consoles from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have since become much more aware of the value of their back catalogue and have introduced various ways to play older games. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was playing Fallout 3, Darksiders 2 and the Walking Dead according to my next post. I remember finishing the first two and giving up on the last. <br /><br /></div><div>There was a lovely bit of father daughter bonding in my fourth post of the month where I introduced my 12 year old to Star Wars. Even though she is an adult now she She still has a few items of star wars memorabilia which I take as a good sign. </div><div><br /></div><div>My fifth post is a complaint about Microsoft dropping the ball with Skype and how Microsoft's neglect of video calling had allowed WhatsApp to sneak in and build a dominant position in the market. Whatsapp now owned by Facebook became and remains the world's most popular communication app. Microsoft did later manage to grab a dominant position in business video conferencing with Teams but poor Skype is still a neglected cousin. <br /><br /></div><div>I seemed to have been obsessed with obsolescence that month. My next post was a cryptic one about the decline of the buggy whip market. The references to model 7 and model 8 makes me think it was intended as a rather well disguised swipe at Windows 8. It probably seemed clever at the time. </div><div><br /></div><div>Next post is about good and bad checkpoint design. Overall I think that checkpointing in games has gotten better but some games still get it wrong even today. </div><div><br /></div><div>An interesting post follows about the fact that even back then I bought more games from third party resellers than from Steam. The main point of that post remains true today: Even though Steam is the largest retailer of PC games it is rarely the cheapest. </div><div><br /></div><div>I played Bioshock Infinite that month and I was enormously impressed with it. I quote: "This game truly is a work of art". I thought / still think the Bioshock series is a masterpiece and Infinite is its crowning glory but opinions elsewhere are mixed. Many commentators call out the game for being pretentious and complain that story took precedence over gameplay. However I still think Infinite was a great leap forward in story telling in games and enabled more recent games like Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War to unashamedly have strong storylines underpinning their action game play. </div><div><br /></div><div>I also played Darksiders 2 that month and was particularly impressed by the gorehammer rocket launcher. It was obviously a good gaming month for me. </div><div><br /></div><div>A brief post follows about how Google was profiling me for advertising. I have long since reconciled myself to the fact that the big tech companies know more about every aspect of my life than I do myself although I did start to use the privacy focussed Brave browser about a year ago. A side effect of this is that I no longer default to Google search. I still use Gmail, Youtube and Google maps so Alphabet has plenty of data points with which to profile me. To be honest I use Brave because it has built in ad blocking not because of any particular privacy concerns. I can recommend Brave to anyone who uses Chrome but would like a more privacy focussed browser with built in ad block. Brave is based on Chrome so it feels very similar and can even run Chrome extensions. It seems to work reliably on every website and if you do hit a rare problem you can turn off the "privacy shields" at the press of a button and that usually solves it. Brave is available on just about every platform. The only caveat is that it uses a crypto token to monetise its advertising model which seems a bit sketchy. I opted out of it and haven't suffered any limitations. </div><div><br /></div><div>The final post of the month asks if it was too late in 2013 to try some Wii games. Sadly I never really put that to the test. Too many games and too little time to play them all. </div><div><br /></div><div>That was April 2013. I wrote 12 posts that month which was quite prolific given that I only wrote 66 posts that whole year. Nowadays I am lucky to write a post a month although I do enjoy having a creative outlet when I am in the mood to write. This blog was at its busiest back in the heady days of Lotro 2007-20011 when I was averaging more than three posts a week. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-55585910473927992842023-04-26T22:41:00.001+00:002023-04-26T22:41:06.505+00:00Memories of a school retreat (originally posted on Reddit) <p> <span style="background-color: #f0f3fc; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I had a life changing experience at a school retreat but not in the way you might think.</span></p><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">This was many years ago when Ireland was a very religious country. Our retreat was led by an enthusiastic young priest who played the guitar and wanted to inspire us to change the world. He was actually a nice enough chap and he led us through a couple of days of prayer and soul searching. Then towards the end he put a challenge to us "Do you want to accept things the way they are like a humble mouse or do you want to go out there and make a difference like a a roaring lion". We were young and impressionable and most of us got caught up in the wave and said "Yes we want to change the world. That is what God wants us to do."</p><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">There was one student though. He wasn't from a privileged background and he wasn't a star in class but he was the lone voice who spoke against the wave of enthusiasm that the rest of us got caught up in. "I don't agree." He said. "I think it is OK to be an ordinary person and just do the best you can to live a good life. I think that is what God wants us to do."</p><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">I was too young to immediately recognise the wisdom in what he said but the young priest wasn't. He was dumbstruck and clearly shaken. He wasn't able to continue the retreat after that so it sort of of dissolved leaving us all to think about what had happened.</p><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">More than four decades have passed since that day but I still remember the wisdom of that 15 year old. I have long since given up on whatever religious faith I had but that message still speaks to me: It is OK to be an ordinary person and just do the best you can.</p><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">Originally posted on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualIreland/comments/12zqwg6/anyone_else_do_those_religious_retreat_dos_days/</p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-48011437060020233262023-02-19T12:38:00.004+00:002023-02-19T12:38:51.600+00:00I think I may need to take a break from Elden Ring. Subtitle: Playing Elden Ring the Slow Way. <p> Back in 2012 the brooding world of <a href="https://mindbendingpuzzles.blogspot.com/2014/01/dark-souls-snippets-from-2012.html">Dark Souls consumed me for several weeks</a>. I bounced off several other FromSoft games but <a href="https://mindbendingpuzzles.blogspot.com/2023/01/first-impressions-of-elden-ring-after.html">Elden Ring's more accessible approach</a> has sucked me back into the Souls world once again. I now have now spent over 200 hours in the game and it has become a compulsion. At this stage I am strongly considering taking a break. </p><p>Elden ring has taught me something about myself and about the way I approach games. I play very very slowly. <a href="https://howlongtobeat.com/game/68151">How Long to Beat</a> suggests that the main storyline takes about 55 hours and that 100% completion takes around 130. After 200 hours my level 65 character is less than half way through the game (currently in Redmayne Castle preparing to take down Starscourge Radahn). When I realised how slowly I was progressing compared to others I initially blamed it on my lack of skill however on reflection I think it has more to do with the way I prefer to play. To give an example from yesterday:</p><p>I spent four hours overcoming a <a href="https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Decaying+Ekzykes">dragon in Caelid</a> that was entirely optional to the main questline and whose drop was of no use to my build. Most of that time was spent trying to find a way to cheese the boss fight using the summoned spirit archer <a href="https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Latenna+The+Albinauric">Latenna </a>. Latenna has very long range and she remains stationary where you summon her so I got it into my head that if I could find a safe spot to put her she could kill the dragon while I kept it distracted. Things are not so easy unfortunately because spirit companions can only be summoned in a zone close to the boss so despite my best efforts the dragon kept finding Latenna and killing her before she could do much damage. I spent many attempts looking for crevices and trees where she might be able to shoot from. One spot behind a bush at the outer edge of her allowable area seemed to offer better protection but eventually the dragon always found her. Sadly I never managed to find a magic safe spot for her and in the end I took down the dragon myself using mounted combat. It took about twenty minutes. Do I regret spending four hours on a combat that should only have taken twenty minutes? No. My only regret is that I didn't manage to pull it off the cheese and I still have a goal of using Latennna to cheese some boss fight if I can find a safe nook to put her on. </p><p>The above instance is fairly typical of how I play the game. I have spent many hours pursuing entirely self made objectives that are not at all central to the game. Even withing the normal game I much prefer a slow methodical approach to things than frenetic pitched battle. I love clearing out dangerous areas one enemy at a time using stealth and tactics. I don't really enjoy major dungeon bosses because you tend to be thrown into the action with little scope for creativity or methodical approaches. Open world bosses tend to be better in that respect although I do like overcoming dungeon bosses because of the rewards they give and the new parts of the game they unlock. </p><p>So I am playing Elden Ring very slowly and I am enjoying it. Is this a bad thing? Not really but this slow methodical approach does become very compulsive. I have spent an enormous amount of time immersed in the game since installing it about seven weeks ago. I think I should probably take a break and come up for air. </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-10236916727095851022023-01-22T10:42:00.006+00:002023-01-22T10:49:29.060+00:00First impressions of Elden Ring after 77 hours<p> Steam says I have played Elden Ring for 77 hours since installing the game 23 days ago. Some of that is undoubtedly idle time but I have probably clocked at least 50 hours of actual playtime and I am still very much a beginner. </p><p>Elden Ring is the 2022 mega hit game from From Software, creator of the hugely influential Demon souls / Dark Souls series. These games are notoriously hard core and make a virtue out of not hand holding players. Elden Ring remains true to the souls formula but in a bigger bolder and more accessible format. Elden Ring has been rewarded with huge sales and multiple critical accolades including several "Game of the Year" titles. </p><p>More accessible is a relative term. Unlike previous souls games Elden Ring does have a tutorial (if you can find it by jumping off a cliff) but it only teaches the very basics of melee combat. Most of the games many many complex systems are left for the player to figure out by themselves including things as fundamental as how to cast a spell. On the other hand if you define accessibility as the ability to access and progress through the game world then several core design choices have made the game a completely different animal than previous souls games. Elden Ring has a (vast) open world as opposed to the linear corridors of previous souls games. Elden Ring gives you a mount to ride away from danger. Elden Ring has very effective stealth mechanics. Elden Ring allows you to summon spirit companions to help with challenging encounters. The mobs and bosses of Elden Ring are just as tough as in previous souls games but the open world allows you to find alternative paths to challenging encounters. The summons, the mount and even stealth can be often be used to help with tougher battles. Taken together these changes make Elden Ring a much easier game for less hard core players like myself. </p><p>When I first started playing the game I tried to avoid guides as much as possible in order to get the full experience. Using the time honoured souls game approach of learning by dying I managed to blunder my way in to picking up a mount and my first spirit to summon. I had very little idea of what I was supposed to do but I followed the trail highlighted by grace points (checkpoint save points) as best I could. Along the way I explored a bit, fighting battles I could win and avoiding those I couldn't. I picked up a few spells to complement melee combat and was even able to clear out a few dungeons with minor bosses along the way. </p><p>After a while I realised that I wasn't really having fun any more. The enemies around me had scaled far more than I had and in order to make progress I had to either avoid combat entirely or spend hours cheesily whittling down mobs with stealth and kiting. I got as far as a place called the Grand Lift of Decus which I later realised is designed for players of level 50+. I hadn't really paid attention to levelling and was still in the teens. </p><p>Aside: For those interested in the details I started with a Vagabond Knight. This is probably the best equipped character who starts out with good armour and a full block shield. This gear is so good I am still using most of it at level 35 which is probably the reason I was able to get so far before it dawned on me that I was way under levelled for the zone I was in. </p><p>Rather than the abandon the game I returned to the starter zone of West Limgrave and did some exploring. I found a lot of content I had previously overlooked in my haste to follow the main path. I found dungeons and secrets and took down a few bosses (including a dragon and the horse riding bastard who killed me instantly when I first stepped into the world ). I then stumbled into a completely new region called "The Weeping Peninsula" that doesn't appear to be on the main quest line but has its own quest line involving a castle where the demi human servants have revolted. I pursued that line to completion ( a fairly challenging boss at the foot of the castle walls) but I also took the time to explore the rest of the Weeping peninsula and I found a host of dungeons, secrets and mini bosses. I took down crypt watchdogs that looked like cats i took down an oversize bear I took down a tree avatar and several other mini bosses. I spent days in that one zone and it finally dawned on me just how densely packed Elden Ring's enormous game world is with content. This game is vast. </p><p>I adopted a much more completionist play style and even though I still like to explore by myself I am no longer averse to consulting guides to determine what secrets I have missed. This approach also allows me to level faster than the enemies so after completing the West Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula I was level 30 and able to go back and kill the gateway boss Magrit who guards the entrance to an optional dungeon crawl in Castle Storm Veil. I hours more working through the castle and I am now level 39 and I have had a couple of attempts at the final castle boss Goldrick the Grafted. He doesn't seem to be much more difficult than Magrit. I got him down to 10% on my second attempt so I am confident I will overcome him shortly. </p><p>This completionism play style is very engrossing and I have become very immersed in the game but it also has drawbacks. The game is beginning to feel repetitive. While the world is full of content a lot of it feels like carbon copy. The dungeons in particular feel very samey. I am still enjoying the game but I think I need to alter my approach once again to stave off boredom. I may even take a break. Alternatively I could try and vary my playstyle a bit. I mentioned above that I am still wearing a lot of the gear I started with. I have a slightly better sword and shield and I have added a couple of spells and a bow for ranged combat but for the most part my approach to combat is still the same. I have picked up a huge number of weapons and gear along the way however. None of them are explicitly better than my own gear but they might require a different playstyle which could give me some variety. </p><p><br /></p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-33393061924065090722022-12-08T09:49:00.000+00:002022-12-08T09:49:20.827+00:00Nostalgic memories of the first time I built a PC in 2002 (from reddit) <p> Copied from this Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/zf8x35/what_was_pc_building_like_25_years_ago/izdndkg/</p><p><span style="background-color: #ffffcc; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I am late to the party but your question brings back some nostalgic memories I would like to share:</span></p><p style="background-color: #ffffcc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">I first built a PC in 2002 so only twenty years ago and not twenty five. In 2002 building your own PC was not as common as today but enough people were doing it that guides were readily available and specialised retailers sold components.</p><p style="background-color: #ffffcc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">The actual steps of the build itself were not too different but they probably took a bit longer especially installing windows and drivers. The main components were still CPU, GPU and RAM and you still had multiple choices: Intel or AMD for CPU, Nvidia, ATI and a few few others for GPU. There were a lot more ancillary parts however. You needed a sound card, you needed a hard disk, a floppy disk and a CD/DVD drive. You also needed a dial up modem to get 56kbit ! internet. You needed a wired keyboard and a wired mouse. This was probably an old fashioned ball mouse so a mouse mat was essential. You also needed a big CRT monitor which was probably a 17" 60 or 75Hz 1024x768 CRT. My memory is that CPUs and GPUs were cheaper but everything else cost a lot more so the overall PC cost was about the same as today.</p><p style="background-color: #ffffcc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">Everything went in big steel box just like now although cases were less fancy and there were no glass panels and no rgb. Cable management was a nightmare partly because there were more cables, partly because disk drives used awkward ribbon cables and partly because the cases had no provision for hiding cables behind the motherboard. Also the PSU sat at the top of your tower case rather than the bottom. Cooling was less of a concern so most people just used the stock heatsink that came with their CPU.</p><p style="background-color: #ffffcc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">The process of choosing and buying parts was a bit different. There was no PCPartpicker back then so you had to do your own homework on compatibility and then look for the best price and availability. YouTube didn't exist but there were several enthusiasts sites with guides and reviews. Toms Hardware and Anandtech were two of the biggest that are still around. Actual paper magazines were a thing and often gave more in depth information than the websites. Amazon didn't sell computer parts back then and there was no EBAY but there were several online retailers who offered a range of PC parts just like today. I also used to buy and sell second had parts on specialised forums which I still do today.</p><p style="background-color: #ffffcc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">Installing software was a complete pain. You installed Windows from a CD and then you had to manually install a bunch of drivers from floppy disks. Then you had to reinstall any software you use including applications, utilities and games from CDs. Downloading full packages from the internet wasn't really a thing because the 56k modem was so slow. You did have to download patches from the internet however. The whole process took days and inevitably incompatibilities would show up requiring hours of trouble shooting.</p><p style="background-color: #ffffcc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">There was no cloud back then so transferring your personal files (documents and save games for example) from an old computer to a new one took some ingenuity. If you had the two machines side by side it was possible to hook them up with a makeshift network but most of the time you had to depend on 1.5Mb floppy disks or write once CDs to do the transfer. Another approach was to physically remove the hard disk from the old machine and install it in the new machine.</p><p style="background-color: #ffffcc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">As a final note one thing that hasn't changed at all even though it should have is the stupid motherboard front panel connector. They weren't standardised back then and they aren't standardised today so you still have to squint at the tiny writing as you individually connect the pins.</p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-12386642249129691262022-10-26T10:43:00.002+00:002022-10-26T10:43:12.323+00:00Playing the Call of Duty World War 2 games on Veteran Difficulty <p>The original Call of Duty made a big splash when it came out on PC back in 2003. Call of Duty has since become one of the biggest franchises in gaming. Even though most of the money is now earned from multiplayer and even though the series has long since moved on to modern day and futuristic settings it still visits World War 2 occasionally. I recently had the opportunity to play through most of the single player World War 2 Call of Duty games on veteran difficulty and I would like to share my thoughts and comparisons. </p><p>I have middle aged reflexes and I am far from a leet gamer but I chose veteran (the hardest) difficulty because I have replayed these campaigns several times over the years and it makes sense for me to up the challenge. I also think that playing a 2003 game on a modern PC makes things easier. I remember jerky response times making it hard to aim and survive during the frenetic battles scenes way back in the day. A modern gaming PC can handle those early games with buttery smoothness. I don't recommend veteran difficulty for a first playthrough of any of these games however. The games are not balanced for veteran difficulty and your experience of the game will be marred by difficulty spikes that require cheesy strategies to overcome. Better to play on normal or hardened for a first playthrough to get the experience as the developers intended. </p><p>I will list the games in order of release even though I didn't play then in that order. I started with World at War (2008) then Call of Duty United Offensive (2004), Call of Duty (2003), Call of Duty WWII (2017) and finally Call of Duty 2 (2005).</p><p>Anyway in order of release: </p><p><b>Call of Duty 1 (2003)</b> was very difficult to get this game running on a modern PC even though I still possess my original disk copy. I believe that safedisk copy protection is the main cause as it is no longer supported but I also seemed to be missing sound files from my disks which makes no sense. In the end I had to resort to the darker corners of the internet to get the game working. It is a sad state of affairs that one has to rely on dubious activities to preserve the digital heritage of gaming but there you have it. </p><p>Anyway the campaign itself is still surprisingly good. Graphics are crude by modern standards but the campaign missions are challenging and exciting. The difficulty is punishing particularly given that two hits will usually kill you and there are no health packs available on veteran (this was before the days of regenerating health). However the game still feels very polished and balanced. When you find yourself under withering fire there is almost always a pothole or piece of cover nearby to dive into. Cover works and the controls are flexible enough to allow you to take advantage of it. The game allows for and encourages careful methodical game play, relying on your squad mates to do their bit before you advance. The overall difficulty is also balanced by the fact that you can save anywhere. In the toughest missions I used multiple save points to make incremental progress. The game does have quick save but it is too easy to quick save the instant before an unexpected bullet kills you so carefully chosen manual saves are essential. I believe that when this game was released on consoles they did not allow you to save anywhere. That combined with the generally weaker aiming on console must have made the games far more difficult and I would not enjoy that. Most commenters at the time regarded the Russian Campaign as a highlight of the game and I still agree. Crossing the Volga into Stalingrad and being ordered at gunpoint to charge into entrenched German machine fire without a weapon of your own is still shocking and exciting in equal measure. The post apocalyptic grey rubble of Stalingrad has been done to death in many games since but it was still fresh back then. </p><p><b>Call of Duty United Offensive (2004): </b>Strictly speaking this was an expansion pack for the original game but it has its own full campaign and deserves its own review. It shares many of the strengths of the original game and it is has even more explosions and excitement. However on veteran mode it is even harder and not in a good way. The game feels less polished and less balanced overall. While the original game almost always had a convenient wall or pothole to hide from enemy fire United Offensive regularly leaves you exposed relying only on the random number generator as to whether you live or die. The final mission where you are in a train station fighting off Tanks, Stuka dive bombers, snipers, MG42s and hordes of enemies is an extreme example of that but it crops up throughout the game. You have to expose yourself to enemy fire in order to pick up the weapons you need to take out the enemy. You are relying on RNG chance as to whether or not you survive. After much trial and error I eventually found a few hiding spots which allowed me to cheese out the mission but that is not fun game play. My least favourite bit of this game was a Russian Campaign mission where you are confronted by a tank bursting through the walls of a warehouse you are clearing out. The only anti tank weapon available is a Panzerschreck in full view of both the tank and the accompanying squad of infinitely respawning Nazis. It takes multiple shots to take out the tank and you need to pick up a new Panzerschreck each time while under direct enemy fire. Not fun. </p><p><b>Call of Duty 2 (2005)</b> was a launch title for the Xbox360 and is a significant step up graphically from the earlier games. Regenerating Health has replaced health packs and checkpoints have replaced the ability to save anywhere. The controls are very tight on PC with plenty of flexibility to crouch and peek when required. I particularly like the fact that even on veteran difficulty you are not immediately targeted by every enemy in the game. Apart from the fact that this makes combat in general easier than earlier games it also allows you to use fixed gun emplacements without instantly dying like in every other Call of Duty game. This game is usually a lot more forgiving than the earlier games and it allows a more aggressive play style which is fun. However there are several extreme difficulty spikes near the end and in these cases the difficulty is almost always down to one mechanic: Infinitely respawning enemies. There were a few examples of this in the earlier games but CoD 2 takes this mechanic and doubles down on it. Enemies at a particularly barricade or strongpoint will keep respawning endlessly until you progress to a certain physical location which usually requires you to expose yourself to withering enemy fire to get there. I hate this mechanic. On veteran difficulty it requires you to play cheesily, running forward to trigger the point which stops respawning before retreating to cover so you can pick the stragglers off one by one. It turns a shooting game into a running game which is not fun. You won't even know when this mechanic applies or where the magical trip points are the first time you play the game. As an example there are several instances in the American Campaign where you have to clear houses. In one mission these houses have infinitely respawning enemies where you must get a toe in the door to stop the respawn. In the next mission the houses are packed with non respawning enemies and the smart play is to pick off as many enemies as you can before you venture in. The following video from oddly rambunctious on Youtube sums up my own experience of infinitely respawning checkpoints in the final mission pretty accurately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJWTz9eED_M&t=2122s Despite this frustrating mechanic this is still my favourite of the World War 2 games. I love the prettier graphics. I love the tight controls. I love the slightly easier game play. I particularly liked the colourful British campaigns set in the North African desert. The desert tank mission was great. In most CoD tank missions you inch your way through an urban landscape trying to avoid Panzerschrek wielding soldiers lurking behind rubble. Here you speed around the desert taking pot-shots at German tanks. I don't think the Churchill was a particularly speedy tank but the conceit is that the German tanks have longer range so you need to keep moving quickly to close the distance. It all feels very dynamic and great fun. My least favourite part of the game was one ridiculous Russian mission where I had to chase a tank around a square to plant a bomb on it. The tank was fully aware of my position and kept circling away while pelting me with shells and machine gun fire the whole time. </p><p><b>Call of Duty 3 (2006) </b>This was a console exclusive so I have never played it. It was originally released in the PS2/ original Xbox era but I believe it can also be played on PS3 or Xbox 360 both of which I happen to have. I will look into this and update later if I get my hands on the game. </p><p><b>Call of Duty, World at War (2008)</b> ups the ante once again with better graphics, more explosions and more action. It features a Pacific campaign for the first time which is refreshing. The Japanese you face have a habit of popping unexpectedly out of trees and out of holes in the ground which makes the game feel very tense. It uses the same infinitely respawning enemies mechanic as Call of Duty 2 which is a pity but seems to have become a staple of all CoD games since. A lot of pundits rate this the hardest campaign in all of Call of Duty on Veteran. I think United Offensive is probably harder but in UO you can cheese the save system to incrementally force your way through. In this game you only have checkpoints so if you fail it is back to the checkpoint to try over. Where this game definitely tops the list is in the ludicrous amount of grenade spam. On veteran if you stand still for more than a second you will be pelted with multiple grenades from all corners of the map. Sometimes you can thrown them back. Sometimes you can dive for cover but sometimes you are just surrounded by grenades and die. I guess this is to encourage to play aggressively and keep moving but it does often get ridiculous. This expletive laden video from Kyle JW will give you a good idea of what it is like: https://youtu.be/hEN7Y_74P9M. The second last mission "Heart of the Reich" is often cited as the most difficulty mission in Call of Duty history but for some masochistic reason I actually loved it. It took me dozens of attempts to get through the hordes of infinitely respawning grenade spamming Nazis to the door of the Reichstag but I still replayed the mission to experience it all again. Even though I love that stupidly challenging mission and like the game overall I still prefer the more leisurely pace of Call of Duty 2. </p><p><b>Call of Duty, World War 2 (2017)</b> is a bit of a conundrum. It is by far the most cinematic of the games with fabulous graphics and a strong storyline. Unfortunately it makes several huge compromises in gameplay to achieve these cinematic effects. The most egregious of these are the regular quick time events. A dramatic event happens in game, perhaps a building collapses or you are ambushed, the screen pauses momentarily and a pattern of mouse and keyboard commands appears on screen. Press F now to not die. Thankfully they are mostly fairly forgiving but some of them have short time windows and took me multiple retries. I think quick time events like this absolutely suck. They rob the player of all agency. I guess the creator of the dramatic falling building scene wanted to make sure you were forced to look at it instead of running away like any sensible player but I still hate it. I would actually prefer a simple skippable cut scene. If the cinematography is a great as they think it is then I will watch it. If it isn't don't force me to. This isn't the only problem with the gameplay unfortunately. The controls are inexplicably worse than in earlier games with less flexibility for crouching and peeking. There is supposed to be some kind of auto peek mechanism when aiming but most of the time it doesn't work. This is a big deal because the game is full of inadequate cover which is not tall enough to adequately protect you but still too tall to allow easy shooting over. In a nod to the earliest Call of Duty games World at War does not have regenerating health but uses health packs instead. There is a decent supply of health packs (and you can earn them from a companion by killing enemies) but I don't think the system works as well in this game because it has checkpoints instead of save anywhere. This is not the only thing it borrows from earlier games. The Omaha Beach mission is a very obvious homage to Medal of Honour Allied Assault. Overall I enjoyed the game, particularly the cinematics but I rate it down heavily because of the poor gameplay. </p><p><b>Call of Duty Vanguard (2021) </b>I am waiting for a good discount on this latest WWII game before I buy it. Activision have have always been Nintendo like in being very slow to discount older Call of Duty games. The strength of the CoD brand has allowed them to get away with it but it does mean that stingy gamers like myself have to wait. </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-67924373302088491232022-09-19T19:14:00.005+00:002022-09-19T19:14:36.687+00:00How to eat safely at your desk<p> This post is about eating breakfast / lunch / any other snack safely at your desk while working. Lets get the elephant out of the room before we begin: Eating at your desk is a terrible habit that is bad for you both physically and mentally. If at all possible you should switch off the computer and go somewhere else to eat. However the sad reality is that many of us regularly do so. In my case my computer is an integral part of both my work and my leisure and eating at the desk is a common occurrence. In fact this became so common during the enforced covid lockdowns that I learned, through trial and error two tips for eating at a computer desk and it is these tips that I wish to pass on today. </p><p>Tip 1: Never place a beverage cup between you and your mouse. I am right handed and the intuitive position for me to place a cup of coffee is slightly to my right about 20cm from the edge of my desk. Unfortunately this is also the default position of my mouse. My first reaction was to move the mouse slightly to the right and to keep the coffee closer to me but this resulted in multiple spills when I absentmindedly overturned the coffee cup while reaching for the mouse. Now my coffee cup has been exiled to the far right outside the zone of the mouse. This makes it a bit more awkward to reach for the coffee but it has solved the spill issue once and for all. </p><p><br /></p><p>Tip 2: Keep a tea towel to hand at all times and use it to cover the desk while you are eating. Never eat anything directly over your keyboard. That's just gross and you will regret it later as your keyboard clogs up with the remnants of previous meals. The tea towel is also handy for wiping your sticky fingers before you touch your keyboard / mouse. </p><p><br /></p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-73286255859527623902022-08-05T15:16:00.005+00:002022-08-05T21:14:09.754+00:00Grumpy Complaint about Ironing (From Reddit) <p> <span style="background-color: #f0f3fc; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">For some reason I am chief clothes ironer in this house and it annoys me how much harder my wife's things are to iron than my own. This is despite the fact that my clothes tend to be much bigger and have a lot more material to cover.</span></p><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">Reason 1: My clothes are all made out of cotton that can be steam ironed at high temperature. My wife's clothes are made out of a variety of light materials that will melt at anything above luke warm.</p><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px; padding: 0px;">Reason 2: Male clothing tends to be made up of a number of large flat panels. You just lay each panel flat and iron it. Even sleeves and trouser legs can be laid flat. Women's clothing tends not to have flat panels. It is made up of irregularly shaped pieces of material which are sewn together in escheresque arrangements. It is literally impossible to lie them flat.</p><p style="background-color: #f0f3fc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #292f34; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.42857em; margin: 0.357143em 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">Reason 3 accoutrements. My clothes are all fairly basic. The only accoutrements you need to watch our for are the occasional button. My wife's clothes almost always have some kind of flounce or flourish which either needs ironing in its own right or needs to be carefully avoided while doing the rest of the garment. These accoutrements can more than double the time it takes to iron a garment.</p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-55013205489873687602022-07-26T10:22:00.005+00:002022-07-26T10:33:54.450+00:00Necromunda: Hired Gun - A surprisingly enjoyable Warhammer 40k shooter<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgIHPTzByIwSKBlpyFR_78fKdHyFTjl21DDZR7iOwzOWi_Fogp8TH5XtTfNDfjEHrBWICNo997yCzlWY4KK0qpH6TNNQuD9i81KBckLcPkubgIBPJ7uzuczT2q3MHcJ1-SK_4a89hOoWo4ozWSH6Kkc4JrukKCMtvtVKQzpGKItrB6gj3n36Zc" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1404" data-original-width="2507" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgIHPTzByIwSKBlpyFR_78fKdHyFTjl21DDZR7iOwzOWi_Fogp8TH5XtTfNDfjEHrBWICNo997yCzlWY4KK0qpH6TNNQuD9i81KBckLcPkubgIBPJ7uzuczT2q3MHcJ1-SK_4a89hOoWo4ozWSH6Kkc4JrukKCMtvtVKQzpGKItrB6gj3n36Zc" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p>There have been a lot of bad Warhammer 40k video games over the years and only a very small number of good ones. The first two Dawn of War games were excellent RTS games while Space Marine was a great third person shooter but Necromunda: Hired Gun is the first 4k based first person shooter I can remember actually enjoying. </p><p>The game pits you as a soldier of fortune undertaking missions on the gang ruled munitions factory planet of Necromunda. There is an overarching plot which sets you up on the trail of a shadowy figure who is stirring up trouble but the story is utterly secondary to the gun play and the gun play is quite good. Movement is fluid and controls are tight. There is a good selection of appropriately powerful weapons and bionic powers available. The missions are set in large open levels which allow plenty of opportunity for parkouring around with grappling hook, wall running and sliding. The maps do feel a but repetitive by the end of the game but there is enough variety within each level to allow for a lot of fun tactics.</p><p>The loot based weapon upgrade system is key to game progression and is surprisingly comprehensive. The upgrade system allows you to fundamentally change the role of many weapons. This is quite engaging once you figure it out but sadly the upgrade interface and the entire inventory system in general are ludicrously unintuitive. You have separate inventories for each type of item with a limited number of slots in each and a smaller limit for the number that can be equipped at any one time. So for example you can hold five pistols in inventory but only three can be equipped at one time. Just to confuse things further Basic weapons (long guns), special weapons and heavy weapons all share the same three equip slots even though they have their own individual inventory slots. Even though you have very limited inventory slots you can actually carry anything you pick up during a mission. At the end of a mission you have to go through all your loot and choose which items to keep in one of your precious inventory slots and which items to sell for cash. The game doesn't give you a list of all the loot items to speed this up. Instead you have to go into each of the eight different categories of inventory one at a time and then drag any items you want to keep to a vacant inventory slot. None of this is properly explained in game and it took me quite a while to get familiar with it. </p><p>The fast paced combat is a highlight. The game is clearly influenced by Doom 2016 and rewards a fast paced aggressive playstyle with health and ammo pickup on kills. In fact the game repeatedly tells you to play aggressively if you want to stay alive. The game enforces this by giving you a generous health replenishment if you kill enemies within a short while after taking damage. Playing the game as intended you are constantly moving and constantly killing enemies all the while your health yoyos up and down wildly. If you don't do this your health will just constantly go down to chip damage and you are unlikely to survive the mission. You can bring three health packs on every mission but once they are gone they are gone. There are no health pickups aside from killing enemies. You can buy up to three revive shots (called stims) for each mission but using them will result in a poor score for the mission. Although this system works as intended and enforces fast paced aggressive play it is not as good as the system in Doom 2016 which probably inspired it. In fact playing this game has opened my eyes as to just how brilliant Doom 2016's combat is. Doom 2016 has three combat resources: Health, Armour and Ammunition and there is a separate kill mechanic available to replenish each of them: Glory kills replenish health, Chainsaw kills replenish ammo and Flamethrower damage replenishes armour. These mechanisms make fast paced aggressive play very enjoyable and self sustaining. The faster you kill the faster you replenish allowing you to keep fighting. However they still leave a great deal of agency with the player. You have to keep an eye on your resources and decide which type of kill to prioritise at any given time. There are no real time limits on replenishment so you can choose your own pace. Hired gun has three very similar resources (A refractor field takes the role of armour) and they are replenished by killing enemies. You can't choose which resource to replenish however other than the fact that in order to replenish health you need to kill quickly after taking damage. This removes the sense of agency and simply forces you to keep running and keep shooting. It doesn't matter which resource is being depleted because the only action in every case is to just keep killing things quickly. </p><p>Overall I would say that hired gun has flaws but is nevertheless very enjoyable. It is certainly one of the better Warhammer 40k video games. Recommended. </p><p>Edit: I somehow forgot to mention that you get a cute doggo to help you on your missions. It acts as spotter, crowd control and can actually kills enemies. To be honest I found it most useful in the early missions when my own skills and equipment were a bit lacking but by the end of the game I was so focussed on quickly killing enemies myself that I forgot about the dog most of the time. </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-77826307335599658282022-07-25T17:09:00.007+00:002022-07-26T22:11:28.946+00:00I'm playing Final Fantasy XIV. It's an MMORPG. Is it 2005 again? <div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjX_0zj7LFHsrxqHKhY6J20PoUV_x0EIHbqaHVidBBO03M4XKpVqN5OllJ5yEKM8QSREnDb5UNvvlW28g1_iLoldGYTvxp8miBrKE2BljTFJpwxDu8gLCmvNzDz85D8JSyDwjq6LyKBajtsndwFhV7qULYkZyn6SN9gkItMez3lQwEksyUfzU/s1061/FFXIV.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1061" data-original-width="659" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjX_0zj7LFHsrxqHKhY6J20PoUV_x0EIHbqaHVidBBO03M4XKpVqN5OllJ5yEKM8QSREnDb5UNvvlW28g1_iLoldGYTvxp8miBrKE2BljTFJpwxDu8gLCmvNzDz85D8JSyDwjq6LyKBajtsndwFhV7qULYkZyn6SN9gkItMez3lQwEksyUfzU/s320/FFXIV.png" width="199" /></a></div><br /></div>I heard a recommendation for Final Fantasy Online a few days back and decided to give it a go. It is a long time since I felt the urge to play an mmorpg but I have been bouncing around between a few games recently and perhaps in a fit of nostalgia I remember the good times I had fifteen years or so ago when World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online were cool. For a brief few years MMORPGs offered an exciting glimpse into the possibilities of virtual worlds. They also demanded a huge time commitment and required a lot of busy work which is why I and most other gamers eventually moved on. I am trying FF XIV at a very casual level, no guilds , no raids just questing around in the world. First impression are pretty good. There is a very generous free trial that appears to offer a lot of content with not many restrictions. the game has been around since 2013 so it is not surprising that it seems very polished by now and it looks pretty too. Of course it has a confusing array of locations and skills and characters and everything else to learn but since I am playing casually I am not too bothered about anything that I am missing. At least it doesn't appear to have a cash shop and seems to be subscription based. Cash shops always introduce an eve more confusing array of currencies and collectables to the mix. <div>Edit: Turns out it does have a cash shop for gear and such but from what I can see it uses actual cash so thankfully no extra currency involved. <br /><div><br /></div><div>My first character is an Au Ra conjuror by the name of R'liath Theuma. I didn't have a clue about the races and classes when I chose her but having played a few levels I get the impression that conjurors are healers first and foremost. I think that it may also be possible to change your class or at least your role simply by equipping different gear but R'Liath seems to be pretty self reliant for the moment. At level 9 she has four spells which cover all the main bases: A direct damage spell (Stone), A damage over time spell (Aero), A heal spell (Cure) and a 30s sleep spell (Repose). Having such versatility already on a low level character suggests to me that the game encourages solo play but it is way too early for me to form a definitive conclusion on that. I did stumble across some drop in public quests called "Fates" which are also indicative of a game which encourages casual group play. The world seems full of other players although most of them are at higher levels. </div><div><br /></div><div>When I first logged in UI was set up for a game pad. I am delighted to see that it is entirely possible to play a fully fledged mmorpg with a console game pad but I did switch back to mouse and keyboard controls because that is what I am more familiar with. In fact once I choose Mouse control mode and standard movement settings all the old muscle memory kicked in. </div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know how long I will keep playing this but it is enjoyable so far. </div></div>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-74825918557726645352022-07-19T13:53:00.003+00:002022-07-19T14:10:44.932+00:00Tweaking an RTX3060ti for a quieter life (Undervolting) <p>The RTX3060ti I "borrowed" from my wife's Dell XPS machine is a great card for 1440p gaming but the twin fan cooler gets quite noisy when it is pushed hard. This post will explain how I managed to reduce the audible noise while maintaining performance using MSI afterburner. </p><p><b><u><span style="font-size: large;">The Parameters</span></u></b></p><p>First a bit of background information.<b> </b>The three most important parameters are:</p><p><b>1. Fan Speed: </b> The louder the fan spins the noisier it gets. In my experience anything below 1000rpm is very quiet while anything above 2000rpm is intolerably noisy. I like my fans to idle below 1000rpm when the PC is not being stressed and I like them to stay as far below 2000rpm as possible when being pushed hard. Long ago PC fans ran at fixed speeds but nowadays they are nearly always controlled using a fan curve dependent on GPU temperature (or CPU temperature for CPU fans). The hotter the component gets the faster the fan spins. <br /><b><br /></b></p><p><b>2. GPU (core) clock speed.</b> Simply enough the higher the clock speed the faster your GPU pushes pixels. The days of fixed clock speeds are long gone. Modern GPUs vary their clock speed within limits depending on how hard they are being pushed. If you are working on the desktop in 2D then the GPU will idle along at low clock. Start playing a graphically intensive 3D game though and it will ramp up the clock to maximum to cope with the demand for higher frame rates. This adjustment of clock speed can be thought of as a kind of automatic overclocking so you might ask what room is left for the amateur tweaker to influence things. Well the key phrase here is that the GPU will vary the clock "within limits". If we know what the limits are and can make adjustments to them we can influence the process. We will discuss these limits in some detail below. A very important point though before we move on is that the faster a component runs the more power it consumes and the hotter it gets. This explains why your GPU gets noisier when you are playing games. The GPU clock speeds up leading the GPU to get hotter. The fan controller curve sees the hotter GPU and speeds up the fans as dictated by the fan curve. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>3. VRAM (memory) Clock speed</b>. All the information being processed by the GPU needs to be read from and written back to the video ram. If the memory is too slow it can bottleneck performance. There have been several notorious cases of manufacturers pairing GPUs with ram so slow that it crippled performance. Thankfully this usually only happens at the budget of the market. Once you get to mid range and higher consumers are more sensitive to actual benchmarks and manufacturers generally try to balance memory and GPU performance. This does mean however that in order to get full value out of overclocking the GPU you should really overclock the video ram as well. If you have ever tried overclocking regular CPU ram then you will know that it is a complex process involving dozens of hidden timings. I have no reason to believe that there is not an equally intimidating number of timing parameters for vram but I don't think they are user adjustable. The tool I am using (MSI afterburner) just has a single slider allowing the fixed vram clock speed to be adjusted. </p><p><b><u><span style="font-size: large;">The Limits</span></u></b></p><p>So the three most important parameters are fan speed, GPU core clock and VRAM memory clock. The goal of this exercise will be to keep fan speed as low as possible while keeping GPU clock and VRAM clock as high as possible. Easy right? Well remember those limits I talked about? Lets look more closely at them. </p><p><b>1. GPU core temperature limit.</b> In order to prevent damage due to overheating the core temperature limit will dial back the core clock frequency if the GPU ever hits a pre-set temperature limit. Higher clock speed causes the core to heat up so reducing the clock will cool it down. This is an effective means of preventing the GPU from overheating. <br /><br /></p><p><b>2. GPU clock stability limit.</b> Even if you manage to super cool your GPU you still cannot keep increasing the core clock without limit. Eventually the system will become unstable. Graphics start to get corrupted. programmes crash or even your PC reboots. The stability limit is dependent on the silicon lottery and you cannot predict it in advance. You can only determine it by trial and error: gradually increasing the frequency to the point where corruption or a crash occurs. A key point however ever is that you change the stability limit by varying the Core voltage (overvolting and undervolting). More on this later. <br /><br /></p><p><b>3. Power limit.</b> The power limit sets an overall limit on the power that the GPU will consume. In general the more power something handles the hotter it will get so the overall power limit is a very useful limit. It not only protects the GPU core but it also protects all the other components such as the connectors, the tracks on the board and the voltage regulators (VRMs). It even protects the other components of your computer by ensuring that the GPU is not drawing too much power from the power supply or motherboard. The power limit is implemented in a similar manner to the core temperature limit. If the limit is exceed the clock speed is dialled back. This reduces power draw as well as reducin core temperature. <br /><br /></p><p><b>4. VRAM limits.</b> There are generally no adjustable limits for VRAM but ram does have its own stability limit. If you increase the VRAM (memory) clock too high then graphical corruption or a crash will occur. This limit can only be determined by trial and error. <br /><br /></p><p><u><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Impact of Core Voltage</span></b></u></p><p>When I discussed the GPU stability limit I hinted that we could influence this to some extent using the core voltage. Now it is time to discuss this in slightly more detail. </p><p><b>GPU Core Voltage </b>Electronic systems process binary data using signals that switch from a low voltage (representing 0) to a higher voltage (representing 1). In an ideal world the transitions between 0 and 1 and back again would happen instantly producing nice straight edged square pulses. In reality though the transitions take some time so the voltage ramps up and down over time. In fact the transitions can often be curved with a few wobbles along the way. At low clock speeds this is not a problem because the transition time is still a small fraction of the overall pulse width and the signal still has plenty of time to settle into its final 0 or 1 value. Increase the clock speed however and the pulse widths get shorter (so you can have more of them in a second). Eventually the pulses get so short that the transition time becomes a real problem. If the signal doesn't have enough time to change between 0 and 1 and back again then the signal gets corrupted and everything crashes. This is the cause of the clock stability limit. These transitions are powered by tiny currents flowing in the electronic components and increasing the core voltage increases the current thereby speeding up the transitions. Therefore increasing the core voltage increases the stable clock speed. Unfortunately we cannot just keep increasing the core voltage. Too high a voltage you can cause permanent damage to a chip. Even before you get to that level though you are likely to run into temperature and power issues. The power consumed by a chip depends on its clock speed but it also depends on the voltage and the current. Increasing the voltage to allow an increased clock increases the current draw as well resulting in a triple whammy to power consumption. As a rule of thumb you can expect power consumption to go up in proportion to the square of the voltage times the clock frequency. Increasing voltage by 10% to get a 10% increase in clock speed could result in a 33% increase in power consumption. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>The misunderstood Core Voltage versus Clock Speed curve. </b>The RTX 3060ti and presumably other graphics cards, do not use a fixed core voltage instead they vary the core voltage depending on clock speed. This allows for the coolest, quietest operation when the GPU is idle as both clock speed and core voltage are low. When the GPU is pushed clock speed goes up and core voltage goes up to keep the system stable at this higher clock speed. MSI afterburner allows you to see the core voltage versus clock speed curve and manually edit it. Unfortunately the standard presentation of this curve has core voltage on the X-axis and clock speed on the Y-axis which I think is misleading. The current presentation of this curve gives the impression that you can directly adjust the clock speed up and down by shifting the curve up and down the frequency axis. Indeed Afterburner has an actual slider called Core Clock which does just that. Despite the name of the slider this is not a direct adjustment of clock speed. This slider adjusts the relationship between core voltage and clock speed. This changes the power draw and core temperature at any given clock speed. The maximum clock speed is determined when either the power or core temperature limit is reached. Adjusting the core clock slider will impact the operating clock speed but only in a very round about fashion. </p><p> It would makes more logical sense to me to show clock speed on the X (independent) axis and Core voltage on the Y( dependent axis). The main function of this curve is to tell the GPU what core voltage is required to ensure stable operation at a given frequency. If you set the voltage too low you risk instability. If you set it too high you consume more power and run too hot.</p><p><u><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Pulling this information into practise</b></span></u></p><p><b>Tools: </b></p><p>A room thermometer</p><p>Techpower up GPU-Z to monitor clocks, fan speed, power drawn and temperatures</p><p>MSI afterburner: To adjust the parameters. </p><p>A Graphically intensive game of your choice</p><p>A benchmarking tool of your choice (eg 3D mark) </p><p><b>Step 1: </b>Benchmarks </p><p>Set card to complete default and run a graphically intensive game. Run a section of the game for long enough for temperatures to stabilise and then measure and record the parameters below. Then run your favourite benchmarking tool to get a baseline score for the card in default condition. Run it three times and take the average. </p><p>1. Room temperature</p><p>2. Framerate if uncapped (optional) </p><p>3. Core temperature</p><p>4. Core clock</p><p>5. Fan speed</p><p>6. Core voltage (optional)</p><p>7. Default core temperature limit (from MSI afterburner)</p><p>8. Default GPU power limit (from MSI afterburner)</p><p>9. Baseline benchmark score.</p><p><b>Note: </b>At this point it should be clear that the card is hitting either the core temperature limit or the power limit. If it is not hitting either of these limits then you should increase the graphics settings or run a more demanding game to ensure at least one limit is reached. </p><p><b>Aside: </b> If you have a well ventilated case in cool room then you will probably hit the power limit first. If your ventilation is poor or if your room is very hot then perhaps you will thermal limit. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Step 2: </b>Determine your fan speed tolerance </p><p>I prioritise quietness over raw performance so fan speed is the most important parameter to me.</p><p>Exit all programmes except for GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner. The GPU fan should run at its slowest quietest speed. </p><p>Set MSI Afterburner to manual fan control (switch off the button marked A for auto fan). Adjust the fan speed up and down and get a feeling for what it sounds like at each speed. Don't forget to press the "Apply" button after every adjustment and allow some time for it to settle at the new speed after each change. There may be a hard limited lower fan speed but the most important thing is to determine what is the normal fan speed you are comfortable with during gaming. Remember that a lower fan speed will make it harder to maintain high GPU performance so be realistic in your preference. </p><p><b>Step 3</b>: Choose your temperature limits. </p><p>We need to pick three values of core temperature. The first is the core temperature limit at which the gpu will dial back clock speed. The second which should be lower than or equal to the first, is the temperature that you are comfortable for the GPU to run continuously at when gaming hard. The third which should be higher, is the temperature that the fan speed will go to 100%. This value should never actually be reached (because clock speed will be limited when the GPU reaches the limit temperature) but it is more of a safety net to turn on all the fans if things get too hot. </p><p>The quickest and safest way to choose thee values is to take the default values because you know these values are safe. You can find these in MSI afterburner as follows: </p><p>- Set everything to default and on the main screen read the core temperature limit.</p><p>- Choose your desired normal operating temperature on load to be a few degrees below the first temperature. </p><p>- Go to settings-fan and look for the default fan profile. Check the temperature at which your fan speed will hit 100%. </p><p>If you are feeling more adventurous then you can look up safe continuous operating temperatures for your GPU and choose your limits accordingly. This may buy you a little more operating headroom but do this at your own risk. For reference my DEL RTX 3060ti has a default temperature limit of 83°C and the default fan curve goes to 100% at 90°C. I adjusted this to 85°C and 95°C respectively but my fan curve ramps up very rapidly after 90°C and remember that I never expect the core temperature to ever rise above 85°C anyway. During heavy gaming my GPU runs at about 80°C at normal room temperatures. </p><p><b>Step 4. </b>Create your own custom fan curve</p><p>You implement a custom fan curve in MSI afterburner by going into the settings-fan menu and choosing "Enable user defined software fan control" and the creating a custom fan profile by clicking and dragging the points on the curve. You may have the option of "firmware control mode" which implements the fan curve directly on the gpu rather than in the external software. Firmware mode is possibly more responsive because it is implemented directly on the GPU but it also limits you to a less complicated control curve. </p><p>The simplest fan speed curve which still works quite well is a horizontal line at minimum fan speed (which should be very quiet, say 30% or so) up to a certain temperature and then a straight line from their up to 100% at your chosen 100% fan speed temperature. The key point is to ensure this second line goes through a point at your chosen normal operating temperature and normal fan speed. If you like you can have more break points on your curve. An advantage of this is that it can allow you to have a gentler slope on the curve around the regions of normal operation. A gentler slope means that the fan speed won't modulate up and down as rapidly when the temperature fluctuates around the operating point. The key thing is to ensure that whatever curve you end up with goes through the desired fan speed / core temperature operating point as well as the desired 100% point. </p><p>When happy hit apply. You can save this to one of the Afterburner profiles if you like. </p><p>You can test the new fan curve at this point by running your graphically intensive game. If you are lucky the gpu temperature won't exceed your chosen operating point and the fan speed will stay below your chosen value If this happen you can happily stop now. Job done. It is more likely however that the new lower fan speed will not be sufficient to cool the GPU and instead the temperature will rise above your chosen operating point perhaps getting all the way to your chosen value of thermal limit with correspondingly higher and noisier fan speed. If this happens we need to press on. </p><p><b>Step 4. </b>Reducing the power limit</p><p>If your desired fan speed is not enough to cool the GPU then we need to lower the power limit to bring the temperature down. MSI afterburner allows power limit to be adjusted directly on the front panel. Make sure your new fan curve is active and remember to hit apply after power limit change. Test the performance of each new setting with your graphically intensive game. Try bringing the power limit down in 5% increments. Keep adjusting until the core temperature on load is lower than your chosen value. </p><p>By lowering the power limit you are degrading he performance of your GPU. We may be able to recover some of this performance in the next step (undervolting) but if you find yourself reducing the power limit too far (say to 80% or below) then perhaps you are being too ambitious. Did you pick too low a value of normal operating temperature? Don't be put off by people declaring that their GPU runs at 50°C on load. Modern GPUs will happily run all day at 80°C. Alternatively you may need to live with a faster noisier fan speed. Keep iterating till you get a combination you can live with. </p><p><b>Step 5. </b>Recovering some lost performance with undervolting.</p><p>If you had to reduce the power limit in step 4 to get your desired combination of operating temperature and fan speed then you have lost some CPU performance. We can recover some or all of of that by reducing the core voltage. Reducing the core voltage will allow the GPU to run at a higher core clock for a given level of power limit. Of course if you reduce the core voltage too much then the system will become unstable so you will need to adjust by trial and error to find the sweet spot. Be prepared to have a few crashes along the way as you test for the limits of stability. The RTX 3060ti uses a curve to determine its core voltage for a given frequency so the easiest way to adjust the "Core Clock" slider in MSI afterburner. I think this is a very misleading label because what it actually does is reduce the core voltage at any given frequency but regardless it allows you to adjust the relevant curve. Adjust it in upwards in small steps (say 10 MHz) and test. If the system crashes or you get graphical anomalies dial back a couple of steps. If you are feeling brave you can go in and edit the curve more directly. Remember to hit apply after every change and test regularly. </p><p>Your should be able to recover most of the lost performance due to the lower power limit and if you are lucky you may even be able to get slightly better performance with the new lower voltage curve. </p><p><b>Step 6. </b>Memory overclocking (optional) </p><p>Overclocking the memory will also help performance a bit but memory overclocking is a trial and error process. MSI afterburner allows you to overclock the memory directly with a slider. I don't have much advice to offer here other than to adjust in small steps and test after every adjustment. In my case I ended up using the same MHz figure for memory slider as for core clock slider. This doesn't make sense because they are not really related in any meaningful way but it worked for me. <br /><br /></p><p><b>Step 7 </b>Test test test</p><p>When you have got a working solution then make sure it is all saved in one of the profiles of MSI afterburner and applied. You can even set after burner to run on windows start up if you like. Run the full gamut of tests from step 1 again to make sure everything is stable and that you have achieved your objectives. Watch out for any graphical anomalies or programme crashes that would indicate that you have been too aggressive on either the core clock slider or the memory clock slider. Dial back if required. </p><p><b><u><span style="font-size: large;">My results</span></u></b></p><p>For those interested my configuration following this process is</p><p>Core overclock +140MHz</p><p>Memory Overclock +140MHz</p><p>Power Limit 90%</p><p>Fan Speed curve 30% up to 60°C rising to 68% at 90°C rising to 100% at 95°C<br /></p><p>Default configuration was operating temp of 77°C with fan speed 73% (Ambient 27C)</p><p>This setting has operating temp of 82°C with fan speed 57% (Ambient 27C) </p><p>(Note we are experiencing an unusually warm week in Ireland, hence the room temperature of 27C. In more normal times I expect room temperature to be at least 5C lower. The GPU isn't thermally limited so this shouldn't have an impact on performance but I would expect it to drop core temperature accordingly. ) </p><p>Benchmarks identical between the two configurations. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span> </span> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-6411364406912839832022-07-08T12:42:00.002+00:002022-07-08T12:43:53.646+00:00Avoiding the temptation to wallow in the past (from Reddit)<p><i> My contributions to this blog have slowed to a trickle in recent years. These days my main social media output is on Reddit where I go by the name of u/liambp ("<b>L</b>ife <b>i</b>s <b>a</b> <b>M</b>ind<b>b</b>ending <b>P</b>uzzle" ). Anyway sometimes I write stuff on there which could equally be posted here so I am going to try a new experiment and copy a post from there to here. If there are no undesirable consequences I may do it again. </i></p><p><span face="verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: #f0f3fc; color: #292f34; font-size: 14px;">The insidious algorithms of Spotify and Youtube know the truth. A quick glance at my personalised recommendations proves that my tastes were formed decades ago. I try to resist this inevitable sign of aging and make a genuine effort to follow modern trends but with a few drinks in me I quickly succumb to the lure of past memories. I have spent more than one Friday night binge watching music videos from the 1980s. When the zeitgeist occasionally rediscovers past artistes (eg Kate Bush/Stranger things) I allow myself a brief moment of smugness because "I was there when..." but that is a dangerously slippery slope. I don't want to become a cranky old man living in the past who thinks that everything new is rubbish.</span></p><p>Original post: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualIreland/comments/vu58fh/question_for_aging_casuals_how_do_you_avoid_the/">https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualIreland/comments/vu58fh/question_for_aging_casuals_how_do_you_avoid_the/</a></p><p><br /></p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-84111775530891820602022-06-02T08:34:00.004+00:002022-06-02T08:34:54.156+00:00Apparently I have a coffee problem<p> A couple of weeks ago my wife alerted me to the fact that I had developed an occasional odour problem. This surprised and distressed me somewhat. I will admit certain standards loosened during the pandemic but I thought I was still doing OK on the fundamentals of personal hygiene. My wife was unable to clearly identify the cause so a bit of detective work was required. Eventually by process of elimination I discovered that excessive coffee consumption was responsible for my unpleasant aroma. </p><p>I wasn't always a coffee addict but during the pandemic lockdowns I got into the habit of brewing a large pot every morning. My wife sticks to decaffeinated so I got to polish off this litre sized jug of strong coffee all by myself. It fills a large mug three times. The first mug was fresh and piping hot. I tempered it with the smallest drop of milk, less than a teaspoon, just enough to give some colour. The second mug poured later was stronger and cooler so I would forgo the milk. By the time I got around to the third mug it had gone quite cold and treacle like. I am sure that coffee aficionados will be horrified to learn that I just heated the resulting sludge in a microwave and drank it without milk. The pot was empty by lunchtime so I had to make do with one or two cups of instant during the afternoon. I rarely drank coffee in the evenings. </p><p>I don't know if a litre of strong coffee and two cups of instant per day qualifies as a lot. I didn't experience any of the usual symptoms of coffee addiction such as anxiety or insomnia but it was definitely doing something to my insides to give rise to the unpleasant odours. When I realised this I immediately cut out coffee and switched to water and tea instead. I am happy to report that my wife has confirmed that all odours are now gone. </p><p>Do I miss coffee? Yes and no. I miss the ritual of grinding beans and making coffee in the plunger (cafetiere). I also miss the convenience of instant coffee (more later). When it comes to flavour however I am somewhat ambivalent . I have experimented with expensive designer coffees over the years but I genuinely cannot distinguish them from cheap supermarket brands. I do like to buy beans instead of pre-ground and I do like a nice coffee smell but I find that after the first sip my taste buds are deadened so any subtleties are totally lost on me. This probably explains how I can tolerate the final microwaved cup of sludge from the pot. </p><p>Aside: I mentioned that I miss the convenience of instant coffee. This is because I grew up in an era where tea making was a sacred social tradition in Ireland. Tea was always made in a pot to be shared. Initially we used loose leaves and only later, begrudgingly, tea bags. One spoon of tea for each person and one extra "for the pot". It is hardly less convenient to make a single cup of tea with a tea bag than to make a cup of instant coffee but at some gut level this feels wrong to me. I still do it but I am not happy doing it. </p><p>Will I ever go back to drinking coffee? I have already experimented with a cup of instant coffee and my wife did not report any adverse effects. In hindsight there is a good chance that the real damage was being done by the final cup of brewed coffee. The plunger traps the larger coffee grounds but it does not cut off contact between the liquor and the grounds nor does it stop the finer powders from getting through. That third cup which had been steeping for hours was notably heavier, stronger and sludgier than the first cup from a freshly brewed pot. I am not yet ready to go back to brewed coffee but I may in time experiment with different approaches to making it. Filter coffee for example should give a more consistent product. I am not in favour of pod coffee machines. They are known to be an environmental disaster and I have never warmed to the taste of pod coffee. They also rob you of the ritual and aroma of grinding fresh coffee beans.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-44184855675863837792022-05-20T09:10:00.001+00:002022-05-20T09:10:43.128+00:00RX 550 How a bad value gpu might just be my all time favourite<p>Quick recap about my cunning plan to overcome the GPU apocalypse last year: We bought a prebuilt Dell with an RTX 3060ti for my wife who is not a gamer. I Took the 3060ti for my gaming machine and put a GTX 1050ti into the Dell. The 1050ti is plenty powerful enough to drive the three monitors my wife uses for work and content creation. This plan hit a roadblock when it turned out that 1050ti caused intermittent crashes in my wife's machine often during important conference calls. </p><p>Trying to diagnose a problem that randomly occurs once in about 24 hours is incredibly frustrating. I wasn't even sure that the 1050ti was the problem because it worked fine in my PC. The 3060ti itself was not completely immune to crashes but they were much less frequent, less than one per week. Google threw up a few posts from other users who had similar frustrating crashes with that model of Dell when a graphics card is fitted. The only reliable solution suggested was to remove the GPU and use integrated Intel graphics. Unfortunately that solution won't work for my wife because the integrated graphics are not able to drive the three displays she works with (two monitors and a drawing tablet). [Aside: Intel UHD graphics can drive three displays with display port daisy chaining but our displays don't support that]. </p><p>So I was left in a quandary. I was reluctant to throw money at it and buy another GPU because there was no guarantee that would solve the issue and prices are still inflated. However one thing niggled at me. The internet posters who experienced similar problems were all using Nvidia graphics cards. Some even had success using different Nvidia drivers (I tried that but it didn't work for me). Could it be that there is a specific incompatibility with Nvidia and that an AMD card would solve the problem? I still didn't feel like spending hundreds of euro to test this hypothesis but then I spotted the AMD RX550 on sale in CEX for €80. This is a ridiculous price to pay for a second hand entry level card that cost less than that new four years ago. However after several weeks of frustration I was willing to risk that amount in the hope of a solution and importantly the RX 550 is capable of driving three monitors unlike the similarly priced Nvidia GTX 1030. </p><p>To cut a long story short I bought one and fitted it. I actually spent €10 more for the 4Gb model with some idea that it would have better longevity. It has been running without crashes for about two weeks now. It is too early to say the problem is completely fixed but I can say that the RX 550 is at least as stable as the 3060ti and things are looking promising. </p><p>Intermittent problems are the worst because they are hard to track down and fix. Having an annoying intermittent problem in my own machine would be bad enough. Having one in my wife's machine when she needs it every day and relies on me to keep it running for her was very frustrating. As long as this overpriced, underpowered RX 550 keeps running stably for her I am happy to call it my favourite graphics card ever. </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-1363857654908430632022-04-19T12:10:00.002+00:002022-04-19T12:18:37.383+00:00Updated Personal Video Card History<p> Back in 2014 I wrote <a href="https://mindbendingpuzzles.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-personal-video-card-history.html">this post</a> cataloging the gaming GPUs I have used over the years. Its been eight years so I think it is time I did an update. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>2014 GTX970</b>. At €310 this represented a step up in what I previously paid for graphics cards. Partly this came from me being a bit older and willing to spend a bit more money on my hobby but also it reflects the fact that gaming in general and PC gaming in particular was getting more expensive. For many years 30 frame per second was considered playable while 60 frames per second at 1080p was held up as the holy grail of performance. By 2014 however the envelope of desirable performance was being pushed hard on multiple fronts: 4k gaming, ultra high frame rates and even virtual reality demanded significantly higher levels of CPU and GPU performance. The €310 GTX 970 was only the entry level of the "enthusiast end" but it still managed to deliver high quality gaming at good framerates for the next few years years. </p><p>When I first looked to looked to replace my GTX 970 a couple of years later the demand from crypto currency mining had pushed prices beyond what I was comfortable to pay. I opted to buy a new adaptive sync monitor instead. Adaptive sync solves the jerkiness that happens when a graphics card is no longer able to keep up with the frame rate of a conventional fixed frequency monitor. My Dell 2417DG with Gsync allowed me to enjoy a smooth gaming experience in 2017 even though my GTX 970 was no longer able to deliver a solid 60 frames per second at 1440p in new titles such as Battlefield 1 and Total War Warhammer. </p><p><b>2017 GTX 1080</b>. In November of 2017 I eventually tired of waiting for the GPU market to recover and bought a second hand GTX1080 for €460. At the time I thought this was outrageous but given what happened later it feels like a bargain in hindsight. The GTX 1080 was a genuine high end card and freed me from performance worries for several years. I spent a lot of time playing Total War Warhammer 1 and 2 in those years which looked very nice on decent hardware but the card was able to still able to deliver enjoyable experiences in graphic intensive 2019 games like Control and Metro Exodus. </p><p>In the normal course of events I would probably have replaced the GTX 1080 with one of the newer RTX cards some time in 2020 but there was nothing normal about 2020. The global Covid 19 pandemic caused massive disruption in global supply chains. With many people trying to work from home just about every type of PC component was in short supply. It took me several months to get a reliable web cam for my desktop PC. The GPU market took this to another level however with supply side shortages being compounded by increased demand from a resurgent cryptocurrency mining sector. For the next two years it was impossible to buy a GPU at anything near recommended retail price. Scalpers sold any gaming capable card for 200-300% of retail price and miners happily paid that knowing they could earn it back with crypto. I paid €460 for a high end GTX1080 card in 2017 and felt it was expensive. The spiritual descendent of that card, the RTX 3080, released in September 2020 with a RRP of $699. For most of 2021 however the actual street price of the card was over $1600. Nvidia themselves even tried to cash in in January 2022 by releasing a slight refresh of the RTX 3080 at a significantly higher RRP of $999. </p><p>Thankfully my GTX 1080 was still able to handle any game I wanted to play but after five years I really wanted to upgrade it. </p><p><b>January 2022 RTX 3060ti</b>. I am reconciled to having to pay considerably more for gaming hardware for the next while but I am still not willing to pay 2 to 3 times RRP for a card. A seemingly fortuitous circumstance came about however which offered an opportunity for me to get my hands on a new GPU without paying the scalpers. My wife needed a new PC for her own use. She is not a gamer but she is an enthusiastic photographer and needs a fairly powerful and flexible machine to support this. Rather than build her a custom machine we bought a Dell OptiPlex with a powerful i7 processor and enough slots and ports to fit the accessories she needs (2 monitors, Wacom tablet, Several internal disk drives, external hard drives, screen calibration tool, external card readers etc. The Dell also came with an RTX 3060ti graphics card. We paid €1300 for the PC and the street price of the RTX3060ti was €800 at the time so this was a pretty good deal. </p><p>Did I mention that my wife is not a gamer? Anyway to cut a long story short the RTX 3060ti ended up in my gaming PC while my wife was happy with an old GTX 1050ti I had picked up along the way. The RTX 3060ti is a mid range card in theory but is still a significant upgrade over my old GTX 1080 and supports new technologies such as DLSS and Ray tracing. I even managed to sell my GTX 1080 for €435 which is rather impressive for a five year old card. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>April 2022 GTX 1050ti</b>. It would be nice if the story ended at that but sadly there is another twist in the tale. My wife's new PC started crashing intermittently. Every few days it would just hang and would need to be rebooted. It was one of those infuriating problems that was infrequent enough to be very hard to track down but still just frequent enough to be a nuisance. An entire week could go by without a problem and then it would hang several days in a row. Dell's own diagnostic suite is quite thorough but they do no long term testing and found nothing wrong. I started a campaign to try and nail down the problem. Firstly I determined that if I left the machine running for ten hours or more it would more than likely hang regardless of what software was running. With this in mind I tried swapping out components to see if I could narrow down the source of the crash. Swapping the ram from my machine to my wife's machine seemed to run well for about a day but then the machine (my wife's) finally crashed. Ram is not the problem. A couple of days ago I replaced the GTX 1050ti with the original RTX 3060ti. The Dell machine has been running for over 48 hours now with no sign of it crashing. On the other hand the GTX 1050ti has been running in my own PC for a similar period and it hasn't crashed either. It is still a bit early to draw a definitive conclusion but perhaps there is some marginal incompatibility between the GTX 1050ti and the Dell. I did come across a similar situation about twenty years ago when a particular graphics card crashed in a particular mother board despite the fact that both worked fine with other parts. I will leave the test running for at least a week before I declare the problem officially solved. </p><p>So where does this leave me? I sold my GTX 1080 so if it turns out that my wife really needs the RTX 3060ti then I am left gaming on the GTX 1050ti for the foreseeable future. GPU prices are falling slowly so I expect to be able to pick up a new card at a reasonable price by the Autumn. In the meantime I will soldier on. The main games I am playing at the moment are Slay the Spire, Monster Train and Borderlands 3. None of these need high end graphics. To be honest I will be happy to have solved my wife's problem. </p><p>Back in 2014 I plotted my GPU history on Toms Hardware GPU Hierarchy chart. I have tried to do the same on the latest version below. You can't directly compare this chart with the previous version but one point of reference that Tom's Hardware give is the legacy GFlops list. The HD 5850 I got in 2011 delivered 2,088 Gflops. In 2014 I replaced it with a GTX 970 rated 3,920 Gflops. My recent RTX 3060ti had 16,197 Gflops but the GTX 1050ti I am currently reduced to is only 2,138 Gflops. I have stepped back 11 years. The image below is based on tomhardware.com GPU hierarchy 2022 see original here: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWRzyq7iyp70BzPvc2jC7EBIM32bGvsF8ScF7gxOtHBl_zXbOhpfMlLQubw-3FFXUAKv3i7wSKlbMPRzmdZhOm8Q2dtWHZJS9DFa-S2cGsHFbaEZZ-ElCPJRpmvw6Kumgck6Q9cfJwwQtVXBNtv3WeZ25FP2sxApH_Is4fTaZBaQ2iu2us_8/s1349/GPU%20History.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1349" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWRzyq7iyp70BzPvc2jC7EBIM32bGvsF8ScF7gxOtHBl_zXbOhpfMlLQubw-3FFXUAKv3i7wSKlbMPRzmdZhOm8Q2dtWHZJS9DFa-S2cGsHFbaEZZ-ElCPJRpmvw6Kumgck6Q9cfJwwQtVXBNtv3WeZ25FP2sxApH_Is4fTaZBaQ2iu2us_8/s320/GPU%20History.png" width="190" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><p></p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-9256713848639471552022-03-19T14:51:00.002+00:002022-03-19T14:51:15.559+00:00Trying to cut down on subscription servicesI remember a time when people used to buy media content by the piece. You bought a book, record, video or game and brought it home to keep forever. I have no great nostalgia for those times because content was expensive and the selection was limited. The advent of the internet and digital distribution shook things up and for a brief few years a lot of people thought that they could just keep downloading everything for free. Nowadays however we are firmly in the age of the subscription service where you can have access to a large selection of titles for a relatively modest subscription fee as long as you keep paying month by month. Subscription services have become utterly dominant in music and video and there are some very compelling offerings in video games and books now too. <div><br /></div><div>These subscription services appear to offer an unbeatable value proposition. The monthly fee offers an enormous library of content and this fee is often less than you would have to pay for a single piece of content under the old buy it to own it model. Nevertheless all the subs add up and I find myself continuing to subscribe on a "just in case" basis to services even if I amn't really using them. The time has come to review what I am subscribed to and to prune those we don't really need. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here is a list of my current subscriptions and my thought son whether or not I should cancel them: </div><div><br /></div><div>1. Netflix family subscription €17.99/month. This is alot pricier than it used to be and neither I nor my wife watched it much but my kids do and I would probably face mutiny if I tried to cancel this one.</div><div><br /></div><div>2. Spotify family subscription €17.99/month. This is our main source of music for the entire household. I consider this good value and want to keep it.</div><div><br /></div><div>3. Amazon Prime £7.99 per month. I have never done the numbers on this to see if it is worth it but it does give a lot of benefits for a low fee: Free Amazon shipping for me and my wife on family plan. Prime video and also some free books on kindle. </div><div><br /></div><div>4. Express VPN $12.95/month : Bought a while back to allow us to watch a show that wasn't available in this country. I think I will cancel this one until we need it again. </div><div><br /></div><div>5. Youtube Premium €11.99/month: This is a luxury that I treated myself to about a year ago. It offer Youtube music. youtube without ads and also some premium Youtube content. To be honest I can't remember what Youtube with ads is like. I am going to pause this one for a month to see if I can live without it. </div><div><br /></div><div>6. Xbox game pass ultimate €12.99/month: I recently upgraded to ultimate so I can avail of cloud gaming. This offers an awesome library of games and I use this a lot. </div><div><br /></div><div>7. Humble Choice Monthly $11.99/month: Alas poor Humble has fallen a long way from the glory days of 2015. I have stayed subscribed even though I rarely play any games from the service. They have recently removed the golden handcuffs which kept long time subscribers hooked on a cheaper monthly fee. I am going to review this on a month by month basis based on the games they offer. </div><div><br /></div><div>8. Sky TV €38.42: This is a standard satellite TV service that also comes with a library of content that can be watched online. I feel it is bad value but it is also kind of an essential add on for the family TV. It brings together a lot of stuff into one place including broadcast TV channels and on demand TV. It is also the only legal way to watch HBO content in Ireland due to bullshit exclusive licensing deals. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>So I am currently paying about €132 per month on subscription services. To be fair a lot of these (Netflix, Spotify, Sky and Prime) are being shared by up to four people. Regardless I am going to try and take a more critical look at what I am subscribed to going forward. Youtube Premium and Express VPN are getting the chop straight away. I will keep Humble for this month because they have Mass Effect Legendary edition which I want but after that I will review it month by month. </div><div><br /></div>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-23471000401601650282022-02-10T09:56:00.001+00:002022-02-10T10:05:41.819+00:00My AM4 Ryzen Gaming PC has Reached it Final Form<p>In 2017 I switched from Intel to the new (at the time) AMD AM4 Ryzen platform and started completely from scratch with all new components in a new case. I still think of it as my 2017 rig even though almost every component has been upgraded since. Nevertheless like the Ship of Theseus it retains its essential identity as my "2017 Computer" and is likely to do so until the next time I build a new PC from scratch. Yesterday I replaced the Ryzen 5 3600 CPU with a rather unnecessary Ryzen 7 5800x for no better reason than spotting one at a decent price on a local trading site. This change is somewhat significant because it probably marks the end of the upgrade path for this rig. The AM4 socket has reached end of the line with the 5000 series and any further upgrade would be prohibitively expensive for very little gain. The rig in its current state has plenty of horsepower to see me through the next couple of years until I am ready to start again from scratch with a new platform. </p><p>Given that the machine reached its final form I think it is a good time to reflect on the changes it went through along the way to get here: </p><p><b>Parts that have changed</b></p><p>Motherboard has been upgraded once (MSI B350 -> Gigabyte X470). Enables the use of more recent Ryzen CPUS also has better memory support and more sata ports. </p><p>CPU has been upgraded three times Ryzen 5 1600 -> Ryzen 5 3600 -> Ryzen 7 5800x. Faster CPUS. why not. The 8 core Ryzen 7 is not really better than a 6 core Ryzen 5 for gaming but modern consoles have 8 cores so future games may benefit from more cores. </p><p>Ram has been upgraded once 2x8Gb 3200MHz -> 2x16Gb 3200MHz. I am not really sure why I felt this was necessary. I do multi task a lot and often have many programmes open at once, so more ram can only help. </p><p>Graphics Card has been upgraded from GTX 970 -> GTX 1080 -> RTX 3060ti This is the most important component for gaming. In an ideal world I would have liked an RTX 3070 or even 3080 but the current crazy GPU market means they are impossible to get at any sensible price. I only got the 3060ti thanks to an arrangement where a non gaming family member got a new Dell PC while I took the graphics card from it. </p><p>Main SSD has changed from A 500Gb Sata SSD to an 500Gb M2 Samsung 970 EVO M2 SSD. Hmm... 1Tb SSDs are pretty cheap now. Perhaps I am not finished upgrading just yet. </p><p>HDD has been upgraded from 1x2Tb to 1x4 Tb. I actually had an earlier disk that I swapped out because it was too noisy. My last 2 drives have been Western Digital Green and they run quietly.</p><p>Main Monitor has been upgraded from Dell 24" 1440p to MSI 27" 1440p. My current MAG274QRD-QD has beautiful vivid colours and supports Freesync as well as Gsync so I am not stuck with Nvidia GPUS. </p><p>Various second and occasional third monitors have been added. I currently have a second dsiplay (19" Dell) and a Wacom tablet attached for work purposes. </p><p>Webcam has been added thanks to Covid. Initially Trust 720p and now Razer 1080p. I am not delighted with the Rzer Kyo pro despite many reviews touting it as an excellent web cam. I have had several issues with it and I think the drivers are unstable. </p><p>Mouse has changed from Logitech G300 to Logitech G502 Hero. A wired mouse is a bit less convenient but the increased responsiveness is well worth it for gaming. </p><p>Game controller has changed from wired Xbox 360 to Wireless Xbox One controller. I still have the old controller for occasional co-op with my wife. </p><p>Headphones have changed from Sennheiser HD555 to Sennheiser HD598SE. I am not an audiophile but I do love a nice set of cans and these Sennheisers mange to strike the balance between high sound quality and prolonged comfort. The 555's still sounded great when I replaced them but the plastic furniture had cracked and they were held together with duct tape. </p><p>I removed an internal DVD writer and I now have an external USB DVD drive for the rare occasion I need to use DVDs. I have a large collection of older games on DVD but nowadays is is often easier to get a digital download version from GOG complete with all necessary patches than to try and get a DVD install to work. </p><p><b><br />Parts that have remained the Same since 2017</b></p><p>A white Fractal Design R5 case. No glass panel. No visible rgb. It hides under my desk. </p><p>A Corsair RM650 PSU. It supplies power. </p><p>A 64GB Sandisk sata SSD configured as a Disk Cache for the HDD. I discovered SSD caching back in the days when SSDs were very expensive and I couldn't afford a big one. The first time you load up a programme you have to wait for the HDD but once it is in the SSD cache it feels like it is on SSD. Caching allows me to store most of my games on large HDD and still get decent loading times. I have used Primocache caching software for years and I am generally happy with it. Occasionally it can cause hiccups but a manual flush of the cache usually solves it. </p><p>A Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler. The industry standard budget friendly cooler. It isn't as quiet as I would like but I have never gotten around to looking for something better. </p><p><b>Parts that date from further back than the 2017 upgrade</b></p><p>An absurd Logiteh G19 keyboard complete with customisable 2.5" screen. This is aging but beloved and there is nothing like it available any more. Most of the time I just use the screen for a clock but I sometimes get it to display a roll of photos from whatever game I am playing. It brings joy to my heart when I discover a game which still supports the screen. The last game I remember supporting it was Duke Nukem Forever. </p><p>Creative Labs Gigaworks T20 speakers. I went through a succession of 4.1 and 5.1 speakers back in the 2000's before finally coming to the conclusion that a good quality set of stereo speakers was a better idea. In deference to my housemates I generally wear headphones when gaming anyway. </p><p>Windows License. I bought a Windows 7 home license in 2010 and have ported it from rig to rig ever since. I availed of the free upgrades to Windows 10 and most recently Windows 11 but it is still the same license. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-20133491334321556862022-01-10T12:53:00.000+00:002022-01-10T12:53:07.353+00:00Can PC Gaming Survive the Great GPU Crysis of 2020-2022? <p> I am writing this in early January 2022 and it is almost two years since we first heard about SARS Covid 19, the virus which caused a pandemic that has wracked the globe in multiple waves since then. Notwithstanding the fact that there are far more serious implications of a life threatening pandemic than its impact on a hobby I still think it would be appropriate to write a few words about how the last couple of years have affected PC gaming. </p><p>To misquote Dickens it has been the best of times and the worst of times to be a PC gamer. Virus halting lockdowns forced many to look to digital entertainment and gaming of all types thrived. Of course we all headed outdoors as soon as restrictions lifted but I think the bounce in new players and the increased respectability of gaming as a leisure activity brought about will have lasting consequences. Despite a number of Covid related delays we have also been lucky enough to enjoy many fantastic game releases over the last two years and not having to commute to work has allowed us more time to explore the great titles of the past. The PC gaming space has been particularly favoured by developments in the game distribution. Epic continues to hand out free games to everyone and Microsoft game pass for PC remains an incredible deal including hundreds of games including day one releases for a tenner a month. I am somewhat suspicious of what the end game of these moves is but nevertheless I am determined to enjoy the benefits while they last. Another significant development is that Sony has started to release some PlayStation Exclusives for PC. It is only a trickle as yet but this is surely a great sign for the future. So we have had lots of great games to play on PC and lots of people with the desire and the time to play them. What could go wrong? </p><p>Unfortunately at the very moment when it should have been the best time in history to get into PC games it has been virtually impossible to build or buy a gaming PC for a decent price. Almost all gaming hardware has been in critically short supply at various times over the pandemic but the shortage that has hit hardest and lasted the longest is the desperate lack of GPU availability. Covid has hit the global supply chain for almost all technology products but the GPU market has experienced an increased demand both for gaming and for cryptocurrency mining. Miners are prepared to pay high prices knowing they will earn their money back so the only way for gamers to get a new GPU is to buy one on the grey market for as much as three times the recommended retail price. Even six year old cards like the GTX1060 are selling second hand for more than their original price. </p><p>I am lucky enough that the GTX 1080 I bought in 2017 is still able to deliver mid range gaming performance today. I can afford to wait out the shortage a while yet but I am worried about the longer term affect these ongoing shortages will have. PC gaming has always been as much about the hardware as the games themselves. Even though very few of us can afford to drop €1000s on the latest greatest hardware we still get great pleasure from carefully choosing parts that fit our own budget. Multiply all those costs by three however and the hobby no longer makes sense. Bad and all though the situation is for existing gamers at least we have some hardware to game on. The situation is completely impossible for anyone trying to get into PC gaming. I regularly see posts on reddit from newcomers looking for advice on building their first gaming PC. In the past such a post would have warmed my heart and I and many others would happily have given advice based on our experience. Today unfortunately the best advice I can give is: "Unless you are very rich or very lucky don't bother." This situation has persisted for almost two years and there is no sign of it letting up in the near future. Can a hobby survive if it actively deters new entrants from joining for more than two years? </p><p>Of course if someone wants to game they will also struggle to get to get a next gen gaming console which have also been hit by pandemic related shortages but that doesn't give me any solace. The more games and the more gamers the better in my opinion. In fact I would happily advise a budding gamer to buy a PlayStation 5 or Xbox series X available today at 50% markup on the grey market rather than pay twice that price for a GPU that could deliver comparable gaming performance (not including the cost of the rest of the PC). Perhaps I can take some solace from the fact that gaming laptops are still available with modern GPUs at relatively uninflated prices, probably because they are no use for crypto mining. I know that many PC gamers enjoy gaming on a laptop for portability and convenience but laptops are not suitable for those who enjoy the building and upgrading side of the hobby. They also give significantly lower performance than comparably specified desktops. Another avenue is to buy a pre-built machine from the likes of Dell or HP. Those giants have used their buying power to ensure that they can still offer machines with high end GPUs at somewhat sensible prices. Unfortunately those machines often have proprietary features which make future upgrades difficult. The final route is to build a machine machine without a gpu or with an older gpu in the hopes of upgrading it later when prices return to normality. This is actually the best route for someone who wants to get into the PC building side of the hobby but it must be frustrating to put together a new machine knowing that its performance will be terribly limited due to integrated graphics or an obsolete GPU. </p><p>So how will this all turn out? While the pandemic persists all normal rules are set aside but I am optimistic that 2022 will make a big difference. Covid is unlikely to go away but the world will hopefully learn to live with it and supply chains be restored. I am also somewhat selfishly hoping for the crypto currency bubble to burst because I know from 2017/2018 experience that that would lead to a flood of cheap second hand graphics cards hitting the market. Sensible miners don't over overclock their cards because that costs them money in electricity bills. I would happily buy an ex mining card. The fans are the most likely component to fail from 24/7 operation but fans can be replaced fairly cheaply. On the other hand if some normality doesn't return to the GPU pricing market this year I am very worried about the future of PC gaming or at least the "build your own" part of it. </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-63721482681135355642021-07-27T22:56:00.003+00:002021-07-27T22:56:38.931+00:00You know you are a PC gamer when ...<p> I am currently playing FTL:Multiverse. This is a massive overhaul mod of the 2012 kickstarter hit FTL. The mod is enormous. It massively expands on every aspect of the game with many new races, new weapons, new ships, new mission content and a massive amount of new lore to support it all.</p><p>I am really enjoying multiverse and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed FTL but that isn't really the point of my post. Instead I want to briefly comment on the process of acquiring and installing the mod. First off you need to have the original FTL game of course but then you need to find three separate packages from three separate modding teams. The packages need to be unzipped and installed in the FTL install folder on your machine. Then you need to un-patch your installed FTL to an earlier version to ensure compatibility with one of the key packages. Then you need to use the mod manager (one of the three packages) to locate and install the multiverse mod file itself. This step is complicated slightly by the fact that the mod manager looks for .ftl files by default but the multiverse mod comes in a .zip file. </p><p>The mod has grown very popular so there are helpful posts to be found on reddit and elsewhere which talk you through the process step by step. To be truthful it is pretty straightforward to anyone who is familiar with modding PC games but I am also sure that the process would be intimidatingly cryptic to non techie gamers. </p><p>The bizarre thing is that once you go through the modding process the mod itself is enormously polished. It is supported a by a large online community and there are helpful guides and a discord channel. </p><p>Having gone through the process I can't help thinking this is so typical of PC gaming. You often have to go through pain involving hardware or software just to get a game you want running but if you are prepared to put in that effort then the reward can be the best gaming experience possible. </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-85695658728588521312021-06-24T13:13:00.004+00:002021-06-24T13:13:48.185+00:00Is Easy really better than Free?<p>Many years ago a friend explained to me why Apple's Itunes music store was a huge success despite the fact that (at the time) there were many ways to acquire digital music for free. Apple realised, he explained, that for most people "Easy is better than free". </p><p>The power of that concept has been proven by Apple and other companies over and over since then but my inner nerd has never been fully comfortable with it. The cost of "Easy" is rarely just financial, invariably you must also sacrifice some functionality as well. </p><p>Most recently this point has been brought home to me once again through the world of TV providers (cable companies). </p><p>First a bit of background: Ireland is a small country with only a small number of free to air TV channels so most people rely on additional cable, satellite, aerial or internet based services to extend the selection and in particular to access the large range of channels available in the much bigger neighbouring market in the UK. There is an array of options that vary widely in cost, content selection, ease of use and indeed legality. </p><p>In our house we pay a monthly subscription for a well known satellite TV service. Even though many of the younger generation have dispensed entirely with broadcast TV this satellite provider is still the market leader. Most of the several hundred channels it provides could be freely accessed with a generic satellite receiver that incurred no monthly fee. It does provide some premium channels but services like Netflix and Amazon prime which subscribe to anyway are worthy alternatives to those premium channels at a lower overall cost. So why do we and many others still pay every month? </p><p>One answer is that this provider has tied up some popular content with exclusivity agreements but to be honest I think the real answer is their interface is acknowledged to be the slickest and easiest to use on the market. One simple interface allows you to search broadcast channels, on demand channels, recorded shows etc. A simple voice command will record an entire series for you. They even include Netflix, Prime and YouTube on their system so one remote can control everything. </p><p>Easy is better than Free. It annoys me that I could cobble together a home grown system (combining satellite receiver / recorder and streaming services) that would provide the same content at a much lower cost but I realise that this would not be a popular solution for the rest of the family so I put up with it. I even put up with the fact that they often pay over the odds to buy or rent a movie from the included store when I know they could get it cheaper from a different provider. </p><p>Our satellite provider is not cheap and knows how to charge for every possible extra. Easy is not cheap. There is also a price to be paid in functionality. There are many channels that are available from our satellite dish that do not appear in the standard lists with this service. You can find them via obscure sub menu options that allow manual channel selection but you cannot add them to the menu in any convenient way. In fact you can't really customise the interface at all. It includes some subscription content providers but not all of them Notably it does not allow anyone who will sell or rent you a movie in competition with their own overpriced store. Perhaps the most annoying thing of all though is that there is no way to filter the selection to just the channels and services in your current package. Indeed it will only alert you to the fact that something is not included in your package after you try to play it and then it will nag you to increase your subscription in order to view it. There is one series that I am currently watching that is not available on out main TV through the set top box but which is inexplicably available on the companion app on my computer. I don't know why and it won't tell me why although it does offer to charge me more whenever I try to watch it on the wrong device. </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36733892.post-79807322147054622922020-12-16T20:36:00.002+00:002020-12-16T20:36:23.794+00:00AC Odyssey's Blood Fever quest gets a little bit too close to 2020 reality (Spoilers) <p> I was only a couple of hours into Assassin's Creed Odyssey when a young street urchin friend came and asked for my help. Her family it seemed lived in another town which was in the grips of a terrible disease called "The Blood Fever". I'm not sure what she thought my warrior character could do but the girl looked up to me so I set off. Perhaps I would find the source of the mysterious illness, a polluted well or some such. </p><p>I was surprised on arriving at the town to find that it had been burned to the ground and the last few survivors including my friends family were being held captive by a priest and his guards. When I talked to the priest he explained that he had to kill everyone in the village because it was the only way to stop this terrible plague from spreading to the whole island. The remaining villagers begged for their lives and pleaded that they weren't even very sick but just wanted to leave the cursed town. </p><p>This left me with a surprisingly distressing dilemma. Do I leave the priest to continue his extermination or do I fight the guards to save my friends family. This was a surprisingly nuanced dilemma not to mention an incredibly timely one to be faced with in December 2020 the year when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the entire world. </p><p>The priest didn't come across as evil he was just an earnest man who knew that this terrible task was necessary for the greater good. Twenty first century me was inclined to agree with him. There were no miracle antibiotics or vaccines in those days and very limited understanding of how to control infection. I realised that those with mild symptoms were carriers who would surely spread the plague and cause countless more deaths if they were let live. On the other hand my in game character was an aspiring hero in classical Greece. I just couldn't see that character being willing to stand back and watch the slaughter of innocent people including her friends family. </p><p>In the end I felt I had to make the choice that seemed right for my in game persona so I saved the villagers. They promptly thanked me and left the burned out town to spread the disease far and wide. I am sure I will have cause to regret this later. </p><p>PS: I have tried many Assassin's Creed games over the years and none of them has really stuck with me. AC Odyssey however seems to largely ignore the whole Animus concept which I found quite jarring in previous games and also has better combat and better rpg elements. I am enjoying it a lot so far. </p>mbphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678681927137209383noreply@blogger.com0