[What Are You Currently Playing?]

Wow, Wolcen turned into a total turd-bomb. I know that's a risk of early access, I just never experienced a developer team going bankrupt, handing the baton over to a new team, and the second team turning it to a total pile of jank. It's all good, though, lesson learned. 

 

I bought Doom 2016, and while that was fun, I just wasn't in the mood at the time. But I returned to it a few days ago, which was a total blast. It was a little shorter than I expected, but it was a total thrill ride the whole way through. The action was fast and intense, the soundtrack totally shreds, and there was a bunch of unexpected little gems, like gore dripping from ceilings. I'm going to watch Doom Eternal for a while, though. The bad part about Doom was that even though it was fun, I have absolutely no desire to do a second play-through. I'm not sure why, though, as it was so fun to play the first time.

 

I'm patiently awaiting Cyberpunk 2077. Not much to say there besides the fact that I'm super-stoked about it. I'll also be watching She Will Punish Them; it might be fun, or a total cash-grab, time will tell. 

 

So, that brings me to the open-world survival crafting building games I like. No Man's Sky looked like it'd be right up my alley; discovery, unlocking technology, base building. It started out fun, but got very tedious. It was fun building an underwater base, but the novelty soon wore off. What's the point? I could sit in front of my fish tank and achieve the same effect. Well, almost, it's kind of bare atm bc my golden dojo loach got a burr up it's bum and decided to kill all my mollys. I asked it why; "why, Jim, why do you have to slaughter all the gentle fish I put in here?", but I think Jim gave me the fishy equivalent of the middle finger.

I also tried My Island, which is like a digital vacation. I set crab traps, swam with a school of angel fish; how awesome! But controls are janky, building was janky. But it's all good, I;ll put that one on the back-burner for now.

And then, I discovered Vintage Story. I read that the game started out as a Minecraft mod, which almost made me pass it up. But then, I read about animal husbandry, napping, panning, and that the game has over 800 minerals in it, and that I can actually display them. Awesome! Eh, not quite, because it still looks very much like Minecraft. The colors aren't quite as cartoony, but it still looks very much like a voxel game. That, to me, is unpleasant, with Rising World spoiling me in the graphics department. But the biggest drawback to this game for me is the amount of food I need to consume. I shouldn't have to eat five steaks and a handful of berries for breakfast just to stay alive, and then have to hunt again by dinnertime. How can I really explore anything, build a home, or anything else, if most of my time is spent napping a tool that breaks all too soon and hunting even though I'll be hunting again by the end of the in-game day?

So, I don't think I'll be doing any more of those type games, as Rising World has everything I need. It would be cool if the game had sea life swimming around, but how often do you spend any more than a couple moments watching fish swim around in-game? We can fish, though, with four or five different types of fish, in both salt and fresh water varieties. And guess what? I don't have to eat a whole barrel of plaice and tuna just to start the day,nor do I have to drink a gallon of water. Vehicles might be cool, but we do have several types of mounts, plus, I don't  I use waterways instead of roads. To me, it's far more fun zipping on a motorboat than a car. We don't have minerals at the moment, but no game will ever be able to copy how awesome it is to actually hold a mineral in your hand, so who cares? We don't have a few QOL things, like appliances, but who cares, when you can resize planks and beams to build them yourself? Granted, the microwave or tv or blender you build won't actually function, but that's not a big deal to me. I might actually use a blender or a shower, but I wouldn't sit and watch tv or be on a computer even if I had them, so that's nothing but a thang to me.  So, that's my bit for "currently playing", I'll be back when I have something to report on.  

[All New Futuristic Manor]

Very cool

[Sacred 2: Sacred Hall 2 Of The Temple Guardian]

Sorry, I meant to get to this earlier, but my father brought over buckets and buckets of tabulate coral for me to identify. He's a trip "Ryan, I found fossilized honey combs, how is that possible:)" Lol, because they're favosites  I think one might be a spirifer; I'm not too familiar with those fellas. 

Anyway, yes, it is complicated. You know how some do K.I.S; Keep It Simple? That ain't my jam, I do K.I.C.C; Keep It Complicated and Confusing. I'm one of those dreamers. But you know what the song says about dreamers: "You know I'm a dreamer, but my heart's of gold..."

 But that's why I love to share blueprints. Some see Yoda's tomb, when all you were going for is a new style of coffee table. 

[Sacred 2: Sacred Hall 2 Of The Temple Guardian]

What I think, as far as the door; the symbol on the lock looks like a dial to me. Spin the dial and the door retracts into the silver sphere. But then what would you do with the silver circle? Would it hover there, so you can push it out of the way? But if that happened, it seems like it would be a whole ordeal getting it it back in the same position to where the red parts of the door realign into the frame. As far as the manor itself, I like it. I wouldn't change anything, but I'd add one tiny thing; I'd make a cross section to the tube, having a tube gradually decline through the water. Maybe you've got a hidden room under the water, like a lab or a vault or armory. Or, maybe it's a family crypt. Or, maybe it's just one heck of a water slide. I haven't worked that part out yet, as I've still been tinkering with my waterways.

 

Another thing I saw of yours was your Tomb  Raider pyramids. We have those in the desert biomes of Rising World:

but I never thought of playing with them; I just knock them down. But after looking at your blueprints, maybe it might be fun to renovate these things; turn them into homes or build like passages and antichambers and stuff. So, that's more inspiration I got from you, so thank you for that, too

 

[Sacred 2: Sacred Hall 2 Of The Temple Guardian]

One more thank you is in order. Last night, I was looking at  your futuristic manor build, and I realized something that totally changed the way I play Rising World. The manor itself is nice, but in my eyes, a building of that nature would require one of those sci-fi hermetic doors, while Rising World's doors look more like this:

I do have permission to use this picture, as it's a prototype for one of my hotels. Anyway, that's not a big deal, because I plan on turning your manor into something like this:

 

But the building isn't what gave me inspiration, it's the fact that you used water instead of a lawn. My biggest challenge with Rising World was roads, driveways, and garages. It's sometimes hard to gauge that stuff, being that we don't have vehicles to do proper spatial comparisons with. I do have a prototype of a highway, which I'm proud of:

 

 

But this thing takes so much work. But do you know what we do have? Motorboats! It never dawned on me to build any, as I'm usually too busy building to go for a little cruise out in an ocean. But if I turn my highway into a waterway, that answers so many questions for me! I know we're getting more vehicles in time, but I've waited five years for them, which put all my blueprints of houses with attached garages on hold. But now, instead of highway and driveways, I can put a little channel in, and I'm good to go. Bam, the way I build in the game has totally been changed, and it's all because of inspiration I had while looking at one of your blueprints. Thank you !!  My waterway prototype isn't too impressive yet, as I've only worked on it for the last 15 minutes or so, but here it is so far:

 

 

[Sacred 2: Sacred Hall 2 Of The Temple Guardian]

Glad to hear; comedy and laughter are two spices of life. 

[Sacred 2: Sacred Hall 2 Of The Temple Guardian]

Darn straight, boss! To be clear, it's not the developer that spazzed, it was the community. And what they said wasn't just "no", they said I had to take down the whole request period; "can't have conversations like this in this day and age". Whatever. It's turned into this whole thing, which I'm not going to get into, because I don't want to derail the thread. Plus, while I loathe the community, I love the game itself and it's devs. 

[Sacred 2: Sacred Hall 2 Of The Temple Guardian]

No, that's not quite right, I have shared blueprints in the past, but I only share blueprints of my own work. I no longer communicate to the Rising World community. I made a simple request for vestments, and people spazzed out; "blah blah, religious blah blah". My God, it was just a request for clothing. Anyway, if I did ever remove the sand from my bum and show them my blueprint based on your blueprint, you can rest assured that I'd give you credit and share the link. I'm really anal about plagiarism and giving proper credit.  

[Sacred 2: Sacred Hall 2 Of The Temple Guardian]

I certainly would, if I shared blueprints with others. But everything I build is for my own accord, Rising World is like a more realistic Minecraft, and the only people who see what I build are the minerals I keep on my desk. The amethyst says "good job on the dungeon",though,  and the malachite really liked your land resort. The smoky quartz doesn't say much, it's kind of antisocial . 

[Sacred 2: Sacred Hall 2 Of The Temple Guardian]

No, I have to eat my words a little bit. I did use your Land Resort, except I put it on a beach, as a private resort for like business seminars or vacationing spring breakers. But while I was putting restaurants and businesses that would cater to the spring breakers, I thought "You know what I've never seen while on vacation? A Larp room!" Your Dungeon of Moxdoon worked lovely as a larp room, thank you so much

[Sacred 2: Sacred Hall 2 Of The Temple Guardian]

Thank you for the link to 3D Warehouse. . I'm not a big fan of dungeons, but I love the homes on here. I like your land resort, I think I'm going to try to duplicate this in Rising World. 

[Currently Listening to... Share your music!]

Taste freeze; I am so totally happy to be taste frozen! I was talking with one of my old friends about being a teen of the 90s, and Benchwarmers was brought up. Benchwarmers were like baseball cards, but had supermodels on them. I brought up my favorite, Billie Inglish, whom he said he was unfamiliar with. I know her card numbers were 52 and 58, but there's a third one that I never got, so I went to look it up. On a side note, don't tell my wife, lol, stuff would hit the fan; "you mean to tell me that you can't remember where you put the remote for the Firestick, but you can the remember the card number of some chick from the 90s?" Yup!

 

Anyway, I went to look it up, and this other name kept popping up, Billie..... Eilish or Eirish or Eyelid or something like that. It was this girl, like 17 or 18 or something like that, dressed like an alternative goth of the 90s. So, I'm thinking "this might be fun, she looks like she could be the daughter of like Dez Fafara or something". Granted, I wasn't expecting like a nu metal or post-grunge, but I was thinking like maybe a new type of ska or something? I mean, come on, you don't dress like the picture I saw and then sing "Over the Rainbow". Right? Bonk, not in this case; what I heard sucked. It was pop, but not like in a Samantha Fox type of way, more like nervous little girl singing on Mickey Mouse Club. Good God, man. I thought that when you get old, music is supposed to sound louder and freaky and confusing. I used to have a sticker on my guitar case that said "if it's too freaking loud, if it's too freaking heavy, you're too freaking old!" Music's not supposed to sound lamer and cheesier. Granted, I have a whopping zero music videos on whatever constitutes for MTV these days, but good god, man, I'm happy to have my musical taste frozen in the late 90s; kids today don't seem to know how to rock. 

[Currently Watching...]

Logan's Run taught me two things: 1)bras become extinct in the future and 2) It looks like you could be far more liberal with the "PG" rating in the '70s compared to now.

[Currently Watching...]

I don't see the Expanse on Netflix, must not be in my region. However, while looking for it, I came across something that looks like I should have seen it but missed it somehow: Logan's Run. I think I'll give that one a whirl. 

[What Are You Currently Playing?]

Can I post videos? I've never done so before, let's see if this works

Happy Day, it did. But look at this; an underwater base! This is exactly what I was hoping for from Empyrion and Planet Explorers! Dudes,....... I'm home...  Thank goodness, after all the searching, years of games that turned out to be not quite what I was hoping for, I've found my signature game

[Currently Watching...]

I've seen Living With Yourself, which I liked, I loved The Witcher, just finished the new season of The Magicians, and waiting on Season 2 of Dead to Me. I wish Netflix would bring back Lexx and Farscape. And The League! And It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia! It will be a sad, sad day when they yank Haven. 

[What Are You Currently Playing?]

You never have to worry about offending me bc you asked a question. I always encourage open dialogue; without it, forums would be nothing more than one person making a statement, then ten or fifteen people liking it, then the first person makes a comment about liking that people liked his comment, then  ten or fifteen more people would like that; that's not too much fun

To answer your question, resource gathering, building, survival, and swimming will always catch my eye. But stupid stuff (usually fickle) turns me off. I loved Rimworld. And the mods! Oh, man, I had working toilets and showers, children that I could teach different professions to in school; just a ton of stuff. But sometimes, I go overboard with mods, can't remember everything I've downloaded, and what was once leisure becomes a chore. That wasn't the case w Rimworld, though. In Rimworld, I downloaded all this stuff to really make my corner of the world a home. But after a while, I started to feel a pull in the game; I learned that making the planet habitable wasn't the goal of the game, it was to survive long enough to figure a way off the planet. And that stopped me dead in my tracks. I'll be the first to state that that's a very shallow reason to stop playing, but that's what happened. I built all that stuff just to eventually leave it? I didn't want to leave it; I had fishing outposts, mining outposts, classrooms to teach the next generation, barracks and military installations fine tuning my guards, rec rooms that had poker and chess tournaments, a clothing store I named "Forever Gilbert" (instead of Forever 21), a restaurant I named Ohio Fried Gilbert instead of Kentucky Fried Chicken (just now do I realize that the name sounds cannibalistic), all this stuff. Now, what would be cool in Rimworld is if, at the end of the game, you can blueprint your base, pack it all up, and then take it with you to... I can't remember the end, are you going to a new world or your home world? Either way, if you could continue your adventure on a world where you are planning to stay, I'd be all about it. Maybe if they make a sequel, you can transfer your characters from the first game to the second. 

 

I love Minecraft, I love voxel games. I also have several voxel games that look a little more realistic than Minecraft, and I love those too. Astroneer looked a little too cartoony for my taste. 

 

I can't make a more precise statement about what draws me in to a game, because it's kind of a case by case scenario

[What Are You Currently Playing?]

Happy day, it did! On a side note, holy crap, do I have to dust! It's wild that cameras show dust that the naked eye doesn't see. I think I might need a new filter on my furnace. Anyway, resource grinding is boring? Dude, I am KING resource hunter! Some of those in the picture I spent days hunting for. Most of these come from other countries, except that little cross section of amethyst, that comes from a sluiceway in Emerald Hollow Mine in Hiddenite, NC. So, blah blah blah, I love resource gathering, so I'm about to dive into No Man's Sky and try to figure out how to make a pool. Now, a person might say "don't give a crap about the rocks, don't give a crap about No Man's Sky, but Breitenbach sounds interesting!" That's a taste of home, an American red wine from my general neck of the woods, by Sugarcreek. 

[What Are You Currently Playing?]

For years, people have told me to stay away from No Man's Sky. I've never heard of it, but no worries, because the title doesn't sound like something I'd be interested in. Over the holidays, a family member was also telling me it sucked. I can't remember exactly what he said, because I had a few glasses of Breitenbach, so it was something like "blah blah endless resource gathering, blah blah exploring just to grind materials blah blah". Hold the phone, mining and gathering are what deter people? Have you seen the back of my living room computer desk?

Every one of these have been pulled from the ground/sea by yours truly. Minus the bottle of contact solution (forgot to remove that), I braved the wilds of Rite-Aid for that. I'm going to stop for a second because this showed the picture instead of the link, I want to see if it actually posts. 

[What Are You Currently Playing?]

Short answer: building a casino named The White Wolf for Geralt.

 

The long answer: through the years, I've made many Sacred 2 characters. Sometimes, it's not enough that my Seraphim is destroying the Great Machine for the light; I'll give her a backstory, family, hobbies, etc; all written in a folder on my desktop. So, sometimes I spend as much if not more time with these little stories as I do with point allocation and character development. With all that time spent on a character, I'm not very enthused to just stamp a proverbial "The End" stamp across their forehead. Someone might say "that's easy, you just find a new game, and try to find skills comparable to your Sacred characters". True, and that's exactly what I do. But sometimes, it's not quite that easy. Transitioning Sacred characters into Inquisitor Martyr, for example. There are two male classes and just one female class. I don't think some of my Seraphim  would have a hard time being an Assassin with the subclass of Sniper or Infiltrator. However, I think some of them would prefer to be a Crusader, who's a big, bald dude. So, how do I swing that?

 

The answer I came up with for myself was making a world in Rising World that I named "The Undying Lands". Men and women are born in a castle that I've named "The Academy", since every type of workbench is present in the basement. They try their hand at a variety of professions, then go off and build a home to practice the skills they've learned. When the proverbial call to arms is issued, their souls leave their bodies, which then grow whatever body that the land in distress needs. Some might say "dude, that's a lot of freaking work just to explain to yourself why your Seraphim is now a male". Yeah, it was. But I also did it to justify impulse-buying Rising world years ago. Normally, I don't put much stock into reviews and forums; everyone knows that you watch people play it on Youtube. But I got myself all excited because I saw someone on the Rising World forum clam that the game was like Skyrim combined with Minecraft. I saw a few nice-looking pictures, and thought "how freaking awesome is this! My character'll wake up, kill a few warlocks after breakfast, have lunch in a woods where I gather a few alchemy ingredients, then come home and build my own castle! No more Hearthfire crap, no more downloading mods that aren't fully navmeshed; I'll build my own!" Rising World is nothing like Skyrim, nothing at all! But who's the bigger putz; the person who claims that Rising World is like Skyrim, or the guy who impulsively buys Rising World without doing the proper research? And of course it took me more than two hours to realize that the claims I read were total crap. So, the scenario I created above is the only enjoyment that I get from rising World. Of course, one could say "you spent $15 bucks, man, let it go!". I can't do that, because it means I spent $15 on something that I'll never touch again, where I could have bought a mineral and enjoyed that bugger every day til I die. And that's exactly how I roll; my grandfather bought me a quartz cluster over thirty years ago, and to this day, I look at it with the same amazement that I had as a child.

 

Anyway, I've done about every possible ending that I can on Witcher 3. I don't want to give many spoilers away for those who haven't tried it yet, but there are several endings where Geralt retires. Sometimes, in some endings he still does a contract or two, sometimes he retires away from adventure period. Sometimes, he hits the road again, and one ending is open-ended. So, I thought to myself "what if Geralt found himself wandering around my Undying land and decided to stay?" As I understand it, Geralt's hobbies are 1) women 2) pugilism 3) cards, and 4) Dice. So, I'm building him a casino that encompasses all of those things. Phew, that was a crap-ton of typing for me. Y'all have a safe and happy holiday season

[What Are You Currently Playing?]

We got an Xbox 1, with Minecraft on it. Not too stoked with Minecraft, so I'm looking at the free category. I see something on there called Neverwinter; I think I've seen that title mentioned here, I might give that a try.

[What Are You Currently Playing?]

No, it's fun. But the little crap trips me up, like DOC. I'll be zooming along, until I get to ones like those, and think "alright, I've got a three letter space left, all I haven't tried is D-O-C, but doc isn't a word!" No, but it's an abbreviation. So, then I wonder how something so simple could have tripped me up for like five minutes. That is the first iphone game to make me feel simultaneously smart and stupid.

[What Are You Currently Playing?]

Freaking Wordscapes! And then there's Wordscapes Uncrossed, Wordscapes In Bloom. I discovered those little devils while in the waiting room at my son's physical therapy. So, that's cool, right? A fun little half-hour time killer. Only it didn't stop there. Games don't interfere with my real world hobbies or obligations, but Wordscapes interfered with pc gaming time. You know how it goes; "Fallout 4 got a new quest mod, totally excited about that..... but just gotta get through this level". And then you get on a roll, and the next thng you know, you've used up your whole allotted gaming time by playing a damned little crossword game on your phone. Darn you, Wordscapes!

[ESP: The beginning and the modmerging system [S2G/CP1.6/EE2.1/SS,C]]

Witcher 3 has mods? I'll have to do some research. 

[Currently playing]

I've recently purchased Din's legacy and have about a dozen hours in it. I don't think I'm going to do a write-up for this, as every Soldak Entertainment game has a free demo on Steam. What I can say is free demos are a stroke of absolute genius; I wish more developers went that route