As chronicled in the appropriate sub-forum thread, I've resumed Daggerfall Unity from where I left off many months ago. One thing I've noticed this return is that my mind has definitely deteriorated since my last extended stay there. Some of that is hopefully nothing more than temporary rust due to neglect. Some of it, for good or ill, is likely that I'm just not as quick-thinking in the heat of damage as I once was. On a positive note, I . . . no, I'll save the rest for the proper thread.

Maleina....I HATE THIS WOMAN! She has stopped me cold in my game! I really wished From Software didn't nerf Black Knife Tish and the Mimic summon. I could really use them at their peak for this fight.
Since they nerf those summons Tish just jumps around the area and does jack squat, and the mimic simply won't heal itself and its suppose to have EVERYTHING you have including having enough flask to heal itself when you summon it.
Yeah I've put the game on ice till they nerf her and the rest of the bosses. I don't like getting gamer rage I have no means of controlling myself when I lose it .

Hang in there, Reaps. Some bosses in Vtm:B are also a b**tch but cool down before the fight and try working out a strategy. Worked for me anyway.

Been playing tons more Daggerfall Unity, which has been or will be chronicled in detail elsewhere.

On the Train Simulator front, here's my most recent contribution to the Official Dovetail Forums TS screenshot thread.

Great shots, Decrepit. The train smoke and forest in the second one is really neat.

Only thing I can do is grind levels and get my strength and health up so I can take more of a beating and dish out more damage. It'd help if From Software removed Melenia's healing when she does damage and buff your summons again.

Edit:
Forget it this game's not worth boiling my blood over, looks like I'm stuck at a difficulty wall, unless I can get some help online there's no way I'm going to be able to defeat Maleina.

Windows Chess Titans stats main computer:

Number of games played: 24942
Number of games won: 23311
Draw: 999

Wow, that's a lotta chess!

That's what happens when I want something to do while watching youtube for about five hours each evening for 14 years

Early yesterday I got a craving for a game I was once good at but haven't touched in decades, Spider Solitaire. No longer having tabletop space for physical cards, I first tried the version provided with Win10. As suspected, it worked well for a few games, then turned into a non-skippable ad-fest (with frequent hints to invest in the "premium" version). So much for that.

Several misleading search attempts later, I found what seems to be an honest free-to-play no-ad Spider. We get to pick between one-suit, two-suit, and four-suit variants. Ever a glutton for punishment with Spider, I cut to the chase and selected four-suit. Played it for hours on end yesterday, all the way up to bedtime. Didn't win a game. Most of the time I didn't even come close. Sometimes I did dismally. I began to wonder if maybe I played the two-suit version back in the day. (It's hard NOT to win the one-suit variant.)

This morning I played two four-suit games before breakfast, losing both. Returned for another loss not long after brushing my teeth. Game four dealt me such an abysmal initial layout and second deal that I abanded it early on. The fifth game was won! Took ages (40+ min) and a lot of effort, being one bad card exposure from defeat a number of times. Lots of fun.

For those interested in this sort of thing, here's the link.

Besides lots of Daggerfall Unity, discussed in the appropriate thread, I played tons of PC Spider Solitaire. Won a decent number of games, though my win/loss ratio leans heavily toward the latter. Two night in a row, the browser locked up on me during a game that would obviously have been won had I been allowed to continue to completion. Ironically, it never locks up during long losing streaks.

Of course

Well now, this is different.

Star Wars: Rebellion


Things are coming along swimmingly. I completely own the Corellia and Fakir sectors and I'm working on one last system in the Sesswenna sector which is the one holding Coruscant. In addition, I'm building Advanced Construction- and Shipyards now as well as TIE Defenders, as many as I possibly can. And I just researched the Super Star Destroyer!

Speaking of Star Wars, the Epic Store has SW: Squadron on it for free for a limited time. I really wish they add a dogfighting mode and more maps.

I saw this. No dogfights? How can a game about flight combat not have dogfights?!

The only dogfighting mode it has is mutiplayer, the only single player modes it has is Story and Fleet Assault and Fleet Assault gets a little boring after a while. This is why Battlefront 2 is the better one for SW dogfighting.

I've been playing mostly DFU and online Spider Soltaire (4-Suits) lately, with little time for railroading.

Little is not no, as these captures from my most recent TSC drive show.

Really nice pics, there. I wonder; does something happen when you stop at the stations?

Yeah. Normally, but not always, when you stop at a station and open carriage doors, people enter and leave the train. It's rather rudimentary. Most functioning stations have a few token people on the platform. Once doors open, they move toward the doors, eventually vanishing to represent having boarded. At the same time, other people appear at the doors, then move toward a platform exit, eventually vanishing. Dovetail's more recent train simulation product, Train Sim World, handles this aspect far more realistically. Despite that, for various reasons I'm not sold on it. I owned it in its original release version, played it a few hours, then never touched it. I uninstalled it earlier this year.

I have noticed sometimes in games that when things happen more realistically, it doesn't work for me and the less realistic makes more sense since it's a game and not real life. Hard to explain. I also know that whatever I'm exposed to first and it's something I like, that's what I stick with. If something comes along that is more visually appealing or more realistic, it doesn't matter. It's not an improvement to me.
This is why I, despite thinking the Jeralls never had enough snow, never download mods to make it more snowy. Adding that would in my eyes only make it "worse" despite it actually improving things.


I hope any of this made sense

A lot of that makes game sense. If snow was more realistic, then you, and the enemies, should not be able to run through it, because you would sink in up to your knees, or slide around on the icy surface. For the game to work, it has to be just white ground.

And what is realistic magic, anyway?

Charm, rally, frenzy, for example.
Also, shock if you know where to stick your finger first.

Well, this type of to the letter reasoning can't be applied here. I think you know what I mean.

Star Wars: Rebellion


Things are picking up, just had the first major space battle plus a smaller one. With the big battle I was attacked by the rebels at one of the planets with shipyards. The rebel fleet was massive but thankfully there were enough TIE Fighters and Defenders in place, plus some capital ships, in order to completely destroy them. Though not without major losses on my end as well as almost all fighters got destroyed.

With the small battle I had one rebel fleet pestering the planets in one of the sectors; assaulting them and leaving troops behind. I had a fleet in place so I began chasing them. Both fleet eventually met over one of the planets and since both were of the same size it wasn't given who would win. I did prevail in the end but one of the Star Destroyers and the Interdictor were so heavily damaged I decided to simply scrap them and build new ones.

I have also started building the Main Fleet and although it isn't finished yet it has begun conquering one of the three rebel sectors.

I bought myself The Callisto Protocol as a treat. It's from the makers of Dead Space, so I was super hyped for it. Someone described it to me as people who made Dead Space, but didn't understand why Dead Space worked and.. they're kinda right. I see where the games are similar, but Dead Space was genuinely scary. And the necromorphs are scary in the way that they look disgusting, but also, the process of becoming one is just completely horrifying to imagine. The critters in The Callisto Protocol are scary, but in a generic space zombie way. Some of them remind me of Wrothken after getting a bad sunburn I'm still in the beginning of the game, so maybe it'll get better, but so far it's fine.

I also got The Mortuary Assistant and did an autopsy on Santa Claus. So that was fun.

Star Wars: Rebellion


Things are really starting to heat up! Today I had several space battles, mostly in Fakir sector. The rebels could just not leave me alone and I had to keep chasing them around and beating the crap out of them again and again! I certainly had no choice as every blockade/assault on a system takes away maintenace points, something I have even less of than patience these days

Meanwhile I kept my Main Fleet busy with some blockades/assaults of systems myself in order to gain those oh so valuable maintenance points. Need to keep strengthening the fleet with more Super Star Destroyers!

On a side note I accidentally had Darth Vader captured today, but since I got him out some time later I hope he's not too miffed

Just playing Azur Lane on mobile and Elden Ring on PC.

Decided to start over on Elden Ring and try a different type of build. This time I'm avoiding getting the Frenzied Flame and avoiding the Maleina battle altogether, she's just too difficult and the AI summons don't do a lot to help. Also doesn't help From Software keeps nerfing the player and buffing the bosses like a spoiled brat being a Dungeon Master who JUST HAVE TO WIN.

(link) Captures of two Train Simulator products acquired during recent sales (link)

Neither is state-of-the-art, but worth the modest outlay.

The majority of my gaming-time continues to be devoted to online 4-suit Spider Solitaire. I did, however, devoted several hours yesterday to a Train Simulator Classic stopping-passenger-service drive from Glasgow to Carlisle on WMCL_North. Many captures were made. Most were subpar. Some are okay. Below is my second batch of images documenting said run:

(link) TSC WCML_North CR 721 Dunalastair passenger run, Part_2 (link)

Found the sweetest little game: Wytchwood. Toddle along with a bucket on your head, catch fairies with a fly swatter (and get fairy dust), make potions and salves and solve puzzles along the way. All very Christmasy stuff! Mind the frog slime now.

Looks very cute!

That looks like such a cool little game!

It is! High definitions graphics, too. Very enjoyable!

Pokemon Violet---it finally got me.

I'm mainly playing four-suites Spider-Solitaire online at the moment. However, I did recently drive a Train Simulator stopping-passenger-service on WCML_South, a route purchased during Steam's Winter Sale, as documented in this link.

ADDENDUM: I made an unexpected gaming purchase earlier today. Visiting steam, I was surprised to see some Train Simulator DLC still on sale. Amongst them is the British route GEML London Ipwich, marked down to $1.99US! It's an older route, showing its age with some no longer state-of-the-art assets. Still, it provides a seventy-mile mainline on a railway I don't otherwise own in my TSC collection, other than one small freeware route that covers only a few miles of track. At the moment, I have only one Great Eastern Railway steam locomotive, the 2-4-0 GER T26. Still, it's nice to have one full-length route appropriate for that loco. I'm already partway through my first drive along the route, and enjoy it thus far.

Another new Train Simulator DLC for me, this one providing a 70-mile mainline for only $1.99US! Between yesterday and today I devoted maybe four hours to driving the length of it with one of my favorite steam locos. (links) Here's documentation of the beginning of my drive. (link)

I am back to playing Dragon's Dogma. I prefer the original version rather than the "Dark Arisen" DLC. The original is well dark enough for my taste... So I dug out an Xbox360 CD, put it in... and found that Xbox would not let me log in and the game would not play. Eventually I found the cause listed on xbox.com: service unavailable. Did Microsoft just kick us all off?!

But never fear: there is a work-around. Make a local account on the Xbox, log in and do not link it to any on-line MS account. Put in your disk and the game will play in off-line mode. Old games did not require internet access yet.

Of course it only works for things you have on CD. Any downloads are hereby forfeit. Never mind, we have disks for every game we own.

Anyway, back in Gransys Lena Wolf just got her heart ripped out by the naughty dragon. She got her myrmidons and is trying to remember how the game worked... She got the same myrmidon as always before - Scorpio is back. It is her main companion, a character you create from scratch, and I still remember what he looked like. Especially since I've been working on a mod to bring him to Oblivion, of course. Hence the urge to return to the original game.

Today was a busy day. We killed a cyclops and chopped off a hydra's head. Then we got eliminated by a bunch of spear-wielding alligators... Did I mention it was dark enough for my taste?

Star Wars: Rebellion


Today I progressed quickly through Fakir sector with my Main Fleet. It was enough to rid the planets of rebel troops to get them on my side. Meanwhile I was heavily attacked in Sesswenna sector where I lost planet after planet to assaults and I even lost the defensive fleet I had in place. All this forced (hehe) me to pull my Main Fleet from Fakir sector to come and set things straight in Sesswenna. After it had destroyed the rebel fleet it remained there until a new fleet was in place to defend Sesswenna whereupon it returned to Fakir to better establish a foothold in that sector.


Only one core sector left now and then it's off to find the hidden rebel base!

Playing Elden Ring on the XBox Series S and I'm trying out a magic class...and turning them into a spellsword.

Star Wars: Rebellion


Much happenings today! I was planning to take it slow but since the rebels came down on me pretty hard all over the place I had to act swiftly and claim the last sector of the core; Sluis. It was easy as all I had to do was once again get rid of the rebel troops and the planets swayed automatically to my side. No need for assaults and diplomacy missions.

I lost another fleet due to the rebels attacking with a bigger fleet and so I had to build more of the upgraded Star Destroyer, some Interdictors and an unspecified amount of TIE Defenders. I also managed to get enough resources to build no less than two additional Super Star Destroyers, landing a total of twelve in my Main Fleet and a total of 144 squadrons of TIE Defenders.

With all the sectors' defense fleets rebuilt and all core sectors claimed, I sent my Main Fleet to the Outer Rim to hunt for the rebel base. Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa and senator Mon Mothma are all captives at Coruscant which is completely impenetrable with 354 squadrons of TIE Fighters and 48 squadrons of Defenders guarding it, along with a number of Star Destroyers.


That base is all I need to find now.

Still playing Elden Ring, I love this game and I hate this game! Yet I can't stop playing it T_T .

Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo Switch!!! I’ve missed this game so much!

It's also on the Xbox Series X/S and in my opinion controls better.

The Switch controls also allow for you to set it up like a modern FPS, but you have to do a little extra work to get it right. I took the time to do it and it works very well! I just wish the aim sensitivity could be adjusted. It’s a little spastic.

The other solution is to hunt down the N64 controller for the Switch.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=n64+controller+s...s_ts-doa-p_3_15

https://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-Controller-...1B7N3&psc=1

Lol, I don’t think I could play the game with the original controls. I probably could, but I feel it would take a good while to get reaccustomed to them.

Game number 26000 of Windows Chess Titans lvl 3.

Managed to play a round of chess yesterday without using FIVE pawns! I can often do it without using three and four has been my personal best so far. But yeah, yesterday I broke that record!

Been playing lots of online 4-suit Spider Solitaire. As always, far more losses than wins. The last game played was the kind I enjoy most. It seemed irredeemably lost several "deals" before the official end. Yet I somehow managed to pull off a victory, despite many instances where one bad reveal would mean defeat. The outcome remained in doubt far past the point when I normally know I'm going to win.