mellowtigger: joystick (gaming)

I first mentioned Shirley Curry, the "Skyrim grandma", back in 2019. According to Wikipedia, she first retired in 1991 at the age of 55. For years recently, she made a name for herself by playing Skyrim online. Her YouTube channel has 1.29 million subscribers. Recognizing her significance to the gaming community, her appearance was officially digitized by Bethesda Games, so she can be included in the next Elder Scrolls game someday as a non-player character we can meet. Apparently she even has a cameo in Starfield.

Now, at age 88, she will stop playing Skyrim for the public's entertainment. I'm surprised she continued this long, considering that she had a stroke 2 years ago. I hope she lives long enough to see herself in the next video game, but that product is still several years away.

Here is her goodbye video. I haven't watched much of her play recently, but I used to follow along more frequently back in 2019. Go give the video a thumbs up to wish her well in her surgery and re-retirement. :)

gaming updates

2024-Sep-13, Friday 10:05 am
mellowtigger: joystick (gaming)
Read about some games from the past...

There was a period of time when people were trying to recreate that classic of the city-building genre, Pharoah (and the related Cleopatra, and the prior example Caesar). I was happy to "donate" money by buying development projects in the works. Three of them are officially out now or soon, with 2025 January for the latest. Here are my ratings for them:

  1. Pharaoh: A New Era
    By far the best of the lot. They practically copied the original graphics and music and narrator, although they are new resources. Definitely fun like the original.
  2. Nebuchadnezzar
    A good original work. It's the same style without being such an exact replica. Worth playing.
  3. Builders Of Egypt: Prologue
    Another original attempt. Not as smooth as the others.

I crowdfunded Dwarven Delve on Kickstarter back in 2013. While I got a playable version on Steam (usable on Linux with Steam's Proton), they stopped updating their Kickstarter in 2020. I assume it's an abandoned title now. :(

I crowdfunded Star Citizen on Kickstarter back in 2012. Their funding page says they've collected over US$721 million during development. That figure is not a mistake. High quality games are as big a business as Hollywood. More, actually. This game definitely is far along in development, but it's still not "out" yet in 2024. While it certainly has playable gameplay and impressive graphics, the UI in it is just awful. I first complained on the forum about a decade ago, but I can't tell that there's been any improvement at all in the UI. Despite all the money that I gave them over the years to fund their development (and I attended their CitizenCon convention in 2018), the UI still hasn't improved. I probably won't play it much, if the UI stays in its current form. :(

The games that I keep returning to, instead, are No Man's Sky for the exploration, Oxygen Not Included for the base building (and I recommend the Spaced Out expansion), and Timberborn (a game I keep mentioning, most recently in 2022) for the adorable city-building beavers.

Linux Mint 22

2024-Sep-09, Monday 04:16 pm
mellowtigger: (penguin coder)

Another very busy day at work. I'm sure it'll slow down soon. No MoodyMonday today, because I don't want the stress.

I've been so out of it in recent weeks that I didn't even realize that a new major version of Linux Mint was released about 1.5 months ago. I spent some time yesterday evening doing the upgrade. Easy peasy. Works fine.

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4732 ("How to upgrade to Linux Mint 22")

Bonus: The newly bought "Age Of Mythology: Retold" (a remake/update) finally works. I thought it was weird that it played fine on my SteamDeck but failed to work on my Linux Mint desktop computer. Both play fine now. Apparently it required a mesa update, which came with the new Linux Mint.

Trivia: I use the Mainline Kernel app to easily manage kernel updates faster than waiting for the usual trickle-down system updates. Works great. The new Linux Mint 22 comes with kernel 6.8.0, but I'm using 6.10.7 instead. I forget when exactly I started this detour, but I remember I did it to fix some other Steam game (which I forget now) that had issues at the time. It's a good and convenient utility. I recommend it.

get your Twitch drops

2024-Jul-18, Thursday 09:00 am
mellowtigger: joystick (gaming)

A huge update became available yesterday afternoon for No Man's Sky. The patch notes are incredibly long. It's all good news. The small bit that impresses me the most, however, is that your spaceship can now make a soft landing on water. No more skimming across the surface of a water planet, hoping to spot a near-surface bit of land that you can use to set down your spaceship.

But what I'm posting about is that the Twitch drops are live starting today. (Use their "Get Started" button to jump to the section where you pair your game account to Twitch.) Watch someone play No Man's Sky on Twitch, and get free item unlocks in your game. It's all stuff that you'd undoubtedly be able to get anyway, but it's fun to see how other people play the game, and get yourself some rewards at the same time.

I've got this stream playing right now (but I've watched this one and this one before, and you can find others here), while the workers are here installing my 4 new windows upstairs.

mellowtigger: joystick (gaming)

While I'm asking for product recommendations, are any gamers here familiar with the Final Fantasy series? If so, what is the best title to play with a console's controller?

I want to pick up something good for the Steam Deck while the franchise is on sale for the lunar new year. I've never had a game console before, so I'm unfamiliar with playing on an Xbox controller. I can tell already, though, that games without explicit controller support (and even some that do) are a pain to navigate with a controller. I'm looking for something "easy" to navigate with a controller. Any suggestions for which title I should buy on sale?

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