To be fair, my bad performance across the entire game was largely due to being complacent. I have an uncanny knack of picking classes in games that end up being the overpowered ones, and once you get the Great Chaos Fire Orb you can destroy a good chunk of what stands in your way, including a few bosses. If not, Black Fire Orb is a good substitute.

So once I got to that particular boss at first I didn't bother trying to learn her attack patterns or a way around her special attack that would one-shot me unless I was Embered. Because I had the death spell. (I wasted so many Embers for that fight...) And that was just the first phase. Once I actually made an effort to learn this and save my FP for the later phases (when it would get harder for a Pyromancer with only the bare minimum invested in physical stats to do serious damage with a weapon) I started doing much, much better. She still destroyed me by the third phase when the summoned NPC help died halfway through leaving me alone with her, but hey, I was making an effort.

I think this is why I don't really "get" why SoulsBorne is given such a bad rap as a super-hard franchise. Sure, there are some bits that can be annoying, but for the most part it IS possible to get through a large part of the game if you put some effort into it. (And I think 3 has a decent learning curve, unlike the previous installments)

Khajiit has been told that 3 is a good place to start if you are looking to get into the series. Which seems bizarre to this one.

It's probably because the mechanics are the most...refined? 'Course, you'll be missing the Mana bar and stance system in the earlier installments.

But anyways, as I was thinking of getting a NG+ started, I recoiled at the thought of having to face some of those bosses again but harder as a fully developed character, so I totally understand why someone would avoid the series solely because it requires you to die over and over and learn from your mistakes.

Anyways, I sort of want to jump into Oblivion again but I'm finding it hard to get into character (even though my old save is barely at level 6) and I really don't want to start over for some reason so...not really sure where to go from here.

Looks like Shadow Warrior (2013) is the last game I have finished this year. I had quite a bit fun with this game. There was a surprisingly good story to it. Some of the jokes fell flat, but some also made me legitimately laugh out loud. It was an enjoyable experience overall.

The current rotation is now Fallout 3 and Final Doom, and mostly Fallout 3 right now. Having a lot of fun with it so far.

However, since it is the end of the year, I think I will get some playtime in on some other games I haven't played in a while. I haven't played Oblivion since New Year's Day, as for some reason I decided to make that the first game I played this year, so I want to get a session of that in. Maybe even go back to Half-Life too. I guess I'll see when it comes down to it.

Update: I made a new Knight, and I'm thinking of making a Sorcerer too because this game is the only one that triggers the happy sauce production in my brain right now.

I decided to play a short stint of Oblivion. I think I have finally settled on retiring my character there, making my second-ever TES character a finished story now along with my Last Dragonborn. Similarly to Skyrim, I didn't come up with a super-detailed backstory and was not as concerned about role-playing when I created the character. I'll think of something at a later date, but that character is finished. So that just leaves my Nerevarine, Agent, Eternal Champion, and Vestige (the first three of which have done everything or just about everything I want them to do, but I haven't given them a proper retirement).

Neither did I when I began playing Oblivion, all that came later as my time with the game progressed. Lothran didn't even have his own name; I named him after me initially. His own name came to me a couple of years later and his backstory even later than that.

I wasn't able to get RE7 but I did get doom vfr. I wasn't leaving GameStop with out a vr horror game 😋.

I remember when Doom first came out, it creeped me out. The first time I heard a demon I almost jumped out of my chair. When I actually saw it charging me, I did!

Now I go back and play sometimes, and it is all so quaint...

Oh, look at that cute little hellspawn




Just finished PvZ Adventure mode for a second time. Didn't do much for me playing it through again so I'm just gonna stick with Survivial and the mini games. I like the music video at the end of Adventure mode though

Well you'll love Doom VFR but just have a barf bag on stand by 😷.

So instead of doing a NG+ in Dark Souls 3 I ended up making 2 new characters: a Knight and a Sorcerer. They ended up being one aspect of my Pyromancer being ramped up, so I got an insanely durable melee character with limited ranged options and an insanely fragile mage character that can steamroll things otherwise. Assuming she doesn't run out of stamina after 2 CASTS.

I have been dying MUCH less than my Pyromancer, but it doesn't mean I haven't run into difficulties, and I can totally see myself running into trouble with either one in the future.

The Sorcerer had trouble in the Road of Sacrifices, and it probably would have been worse had I not had prior knowledge to there being a Sorcery teacher on the Road AND 2 Sorcery scrolls down in Farron Keep. Once she learned the Great variants of the Soul Arrow spells and she unlocked Crystal weapon infusion, she was back to not being hopelessly weak against everything. Of course, there's still the problem with how demanding the spells are for stamina, which got her into trouble several times (she survived, but still)

Theeeeen she went up against the Crystal Sage at the end of the Road of Sacrifices, which was awful because they're resistant to Magic damage and since her backup weapon is infused with Crystal, it's ALL she can do in terms of damage. The Eygon summon wasn't much help aside from distracting the boss. He died at the same time as the boss. :v My Pyromancer had the benefit of having access to all forms of magic so when he reached the Smoldering Lake, he didn't have this problem with his Pyromancies. (Also it's about halfway through the game and he could infuse/reinforce weapons more quickly, so he got a Crystal weapon to replace his Fire one)

Like I said, the Knight is doing fairly well, as is expected of the "Dark Souls Noob" class. Being limited to melee and some archery will put him in an awkward position against certain bosses in the future, assuming he can't endure their assault like he has been. He's fallen victim to parries several times, and since I'm bad at timing those, it'll stay that way. At the very least, his "thing" seems to be surviving attacks that were 1-hit kills for my Pyromancer (and probably my Sorcerer). Almost got his head savagely torn off? He's still alive, but not two seconds and he's already grappling with the Grhu again and surviving. The Stray Demon's squeezing him like a stress toy and he wasn't chucked off the bridge? He survives to be squeezed again, somehow surviving with one HP and going on to win the fight. My Pyromancer's "thing" was being eaten to death, and my Sorcere's thing is being blindsighted and instakilled (usually by stray projectiles like darts or a huge flipping urn) so this is promising? ????

I decided to make Half-Life my first-played game of 2018. Still on the autosave-only run.

It seems I have also completed the main story of Fallout 3, although I can't quite tell. Just have to eliminate any remaining Enclave regiments. Decided to dive into the DLC for Point Lookout beforehand, though.

Point Lookout is the shiz.

Yup.


Just remember to bring LOTS of Stimpaks. And also to hotkey them

Ghoul mask helps too

I'm playing Star Trek Bridge Crew with the VR visor. Its a pretty unique game.

Today in Dark Souls 3: I delete my sorcerer because I'm tired of struggling with how...impotent Sorcery seems to be in this game. I honestly considered abandoning the class early on but pushed on anyways. I thought the Crystal Sage was just a one-time thing, since they were a sorcerer too and was bound to have high magic resistance. Then it was the awful time with the Deacons of the Deep which ALSO took an absurd amount of time killing with Sorceries. (And many many tries before successfully killing them)

Aldrich was the last straw. Plinking away at him with Great Heavy Soul Arrow wasn't cutting it, and I emptied out the healing Estus before I even got a quarter of his health down. So I resorted to Great Chaos Fireball (NOT A SORCERY!). Which has no stat requirements and is pretty powerful even without investment in Faith. But again, not a Sorcery. It STILL took several tries and from then on I started relying on the spell far too much.

So after struggling in the Profaned Capital (mere steps away from the Logan Scroll of Sorceries) I just...dropped to the main menu and deleted the save. I'll just pretend she went Hollow after defeating Aldritch. Well...I guess she WAS already Hollow. At 99, actually. So there. I ended up wasting my time on a character I was initially invested in because of how tricky the playstyle was. Guess I'll go back to the Knight after ignoring him for a while.

Eve Valkyrie Warzone. A nice little space combat flight Sim for the VR.

Right now, I'm torn between Dark Souls and Skyrim.

Dark Souls lets me play a spear-wielding Sorcerer, which is all kinds of cool. But is very much a game you have to settle in to beat.

Skyrim has a similar problem to Oblivion's old issue, in that I have too man character ideas vying to get into the game.

So my Knight caught up to where my Sorcerer was in Dark Souls 3 and if the trouble I had getting back into him is any indication, setting aside my Sorcerer for a while was a good idea. I think what "ruined" my Sorcerer was playing two (three?) classes that play differently together at once and mixing up the styles. I played her too aggressively, and when I got back to the Knight I played him as if he were my Pyromancer by rolling instead of, y'know, blocking and making use of the damn Vigor.

Other than that, I wonder if I'll ever get back into Oblivion

This morning I bought Mashinky off Steam. I doubt that this will be a long term staple for me. But I enjoy this sort of game and have been enamored with trains, especially steam era trains, for as long back as I can remember. Alas, after download completed I tried to play the tutorial, but due to feeling under the weather found I couldn't concentrate well enough to grasp some of the game's mechanics. Either that or I've grown more senile than even I realized. Time will tell.

Wheeeee......

Spent a good several hours in Mashinky pulling what little hair I have left out trying to get one of my two trains to go to the correct station track, then continue on to the next station. Boy was that a challenge! Finally got things working <crosses fingers> about ten minutes past the time I normally begin preparing supper. Scary thing is, I'm not sure what I did that last time that I hadn't tried before...over and over. At any rate, that train now picks up logs at one "station" and delivers 'em to another station, which turns them into planks. There's at least one further stage needed in the wood hauling process, but I've not had time to investigate it, or see where that delivery point is on the map.

Having a blast so far, but suspect this game will be something like Banished...a heck of a lot of fun until everything is mastered and further expansion little more than going through the motions. We shall see.

Still having a blast with Mashinky. A frustrating blast at times, but a blast none the less. I'm starting to get a feel for signal placement and train routing, though certain tricky (and not so tricky) routing situations are still beyond me. My newest fiasco involves warehouse management. I unknowingly let my Foundry warehouses fill with iron ore. There is no room left to store coal. Without coal the foundries can't make iron bars, needed by Toolworks facilities to produce one of the game's several currency values. For now all trains transporting iron ore to foundries are parked in Terminals until ore stockpiles shrink considerably...which is taking forever. I'll eventually resume ore deliveries, with small trains, say one or two ore cars per trip.

One thing I like a lot about Mashinky, a trait it shares with TES: Oblivion. With Oblivion, I love nothing more than watching my avatar slowly riding the roadways of Cyrodiil on patrol. Mashinky offers a camera view that places us in our trains so that we can "ride the rails." I find this very relaxing, possibly therapeutic, especially on my more interestingly constructed routes. Graphics in "realistic" mode, while not state of the art, are quite fine.

I fired up Skyrim earlier, got a Dunmer character going through the tutorial. Two handed weapons and magic, but no idea when it comes to armour

Flicking through the wiki looking at the various armours isn't helping either. There are more heavy armours that I like the look of, but Glass armour looks so good! And there's that vampire lord armour too, now that I think of it.

Either way, I'm hoping this guy'll be able to see a good chunk of Skyrim, maybe get to the DLCs too

Me: Okay, enough Dark Souls, time for a new game

Also Me: Hey, why don't you try playing your Sorcerer the "right" way this time??

So I'm trying to get back into either Oblivion or Skyrim. I left behind a save with Legacy of the Dragonborn I never really finished because of-flipping-course you need to complete certain lengthy questlines. (Pretty sure I've talked about it before, but one huge point against the mod is that it encourages and enforces a completionist playthrough.) I also have that Kaidan follower mod since it looked promising and it's actually updating. I just don't want Vilja again and it's too late for Inigo.

If I can't get into that, there's still that unfinished save file from the beginning of Oblivion. The incentive is that Integration: The Stranded Light mod that I also never finished that's equal parts great and ridiculous. Why do people feel the need to mod in tacky "paintings" into the game.

There's also ESO, which I've wanted to play through again with a new character to see all the old, "vanilla" content, but a major update that's most likely not dropping until February at the earliest means I need to hold off on making any new characters. (You get nice things as you level, you see)

Command and Conquer Renegade.

America's Army Proving Grounds on the PS4. Its officially lisance by the US Army and its free plus its a pretty fun shooter.

I've played Doom 3 but not Doom 4.

I have always looked at Doom 3 taking the more realistic approach than Doom 4 that I saw as a mere fast-paced shooter to impress the kids with. But having learned more about the Doom Slayer's history, I now understand more about his rage and desire to kill demons and thus I understand Doom 4 much better now.

Having struck a deal with a Hell Priest to bring his dead son back by betraying his own kind, he later regretted his decision for when the time came for his son to return, he returned in a corrupted form known as the Icon of Sin that granted the demons even more power. Filled with rage and a desire for revenge, Doom Slayer (a.k.a the Betrayer) was granted powers by the Seraphim to make him faster and more powerful than before as well as an armor forged in Hell itself making him virtually unstoppable.

Thus the demons of Hell named him Doom Slayer who would stop at absolutely nothing to get revenge on the priest who decieved him and corrupted his son.

I love Doom 3 but not the BFG Edition which turned it in to an action horror game by adding more ammo and taking away that survival horror aspect of the original one.

Having been accosted yesterday by an Altmer Sorcerer carrying a claymore, I'm back in Cyrodiil again

I've become utterly addicted to Mashinky. It now consumes almost the entirety of my waking day, to the detriment of almost all else. Much as I play it, you'd think I'd by better at "signaling" by now. But no. Takes me forever to get the more complex intersections right, assuming I don't give up and settle for a more simple solution. I'll say this for myself, in all this time I've caused only one train collision due to faulty signaling.

I seem to be good at generating ample income in the form of "tokens" for various sorts, needed to buy everything in the game and fuel train engines. At the same time I am having the worst time trying to achieve proper coal / iron ore balance at my numerous Foundries. They invariably fill with one or the other over time. At that point they can no longer produce Iron Bars, needed for Silver Tokens. Spent much of the last several days trying to correct that at several Foundries, to little avail. What usually happens is that I manage to switch a foundry from being completely filled with one of the two raw resources to being completely filled with the other.

I'm baffled by the 2-8-4 Class 65 steam engine. Attaching ONE train car to it puts it at or over its recommended max pull weight limit. That can't be right. Maybe I just don't understand what max pull weight is. Certainly the engine does a decent job pulling trains of adequate length. I prefer the GS-2 steam engine at any rate, except that it consumes twice as much coal as does the Class 65 when up and running. (The GS-2 has by far the highest recommended max pull weight of any engine in the game thus far. The limit can be ignored, but doing so can slow a train down depending on excess weight. Had one Prussian T3 so weighted down it barely had the power to ascend a raised bridge. For a bit there I thought it wasn't going to make it to the top. Needless to say that engine got traded in for something more powerful.)

Gog.com has Railway Empire coming soon. You might want to try that out.

Probably going to try out Forged Battalion soon. Looks like it is going to be a good RTS game comparable to the classic C&C games. It's made by Petroglyph studios, which as I understand is comprised of a few of the old Westwood Studio developers.

I'm going to fess up, I went back to Dark Souls 3 to play that Sorcerer again. The reason I dont' want to play anymore is because I'm motivated more by my unhealthy completionist desires than actually having fun.

That said, she did spectacularly this time, and even got halfway through the Ringed City DLC before I decided enough was enough and triggered the ending cutscene and started a NG plus so I wouldn't be tempted to continue. She DID have trouble with bosses like Lothric and Lorian, but it was mostly because the game throws them at you before summons can tank them. I resorted to wearing Dusk's set and anything that boosted Magic damage and succeeded. Other than that, she made use of the more "subtle" spells like Hidden Body and Pesilent Mist (the latter being surprisingly effective), which is what i intended to do before I started playing her more aggressively.

Now that the game is behind me for good, my internet cooperated long enough for me to get the recent Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul and I'm playing my Reachman character again. With enthusiasm, even! :U

Thanks. I'm gonna check for videos of it at YouTube.

My entire Mashinky experience today centered on trying to set up a proper Iron Bar Foundry, fed by nearby coal mine and iron mines, completed bars shipped to a Toolworks to be turned into sliver token. (One of the game's currency values.) Always before I just sort of slapped this sort of thing together and hoped for the best, which rarely happens. This time I tried to get the ratios and delivery times down pat so I'd not end up being short of either coal or iron ore. It ain't easy. So many variables! The Iron Bar formula itself. Distance of Coal Mine and Iron Ore mine from foundry. How many of each resource a rail car holds. Train speed. Speed at which coal and iron ore are mined (iron ore being slower). Distance from Foundry to Tookworks. And so on.

I naively purchased four! GS-2 locos, two with four rail cars holding 20 coal per full load each, two with four 20 iron ore per full load rail cars each. Also bought three BR3's, each with four iron bar rail cars. Boy was that a waste! Turns out my Iron Mine can't fill even one of the two trains assigned it. The Coal Mine does fill one of its two trains, but to keep the coal / iron ore ratio more or less correct I have to reduce my Coal train's carry capacity. What I desperately need is a second Iron Mine nearby. There are none. The only non in use Iron Mines I've found are impractically far away. I mean we're talking F....A....R. It's temping, but boy would that being a track routing nightmare! Oh yeah...I've already cut down from three Iron Bar transport trains to two, and expect to reduce the number of cars per train before all is said and done.

I now have a better feel for what it takes to make a Foundry sustainable, and plan to start revisiting my many poorly functioning foundries and see if I can make 'em useful. (A number produce no income for me, as I allowed 'em to fill up with either Coal or Iron Ore, so that they no longer accept the other resource. Once that happens they obviously can not produce Iron Bars.) How I've managed to maintain a continuous small profit increase with all tokens is beyond me. Well, passenger trains are admittedly easy to make profit with. Just cart people from one city to another. Voila, success. (Passengers award Green Tokens, the lowest denomination.)

Spent the day attempting to bring better efficiency to several Foundries in Mashinky. I near hopeless task, but this I made a little headway at two Foundries. One of the two could have been completely fixed, except while giving the two trains assigned that Foundry new routing instructions I somehow left out a marker in their pathing chain. As I result they never showed up at the Coal Mine. The Foundry ended up with my max Iron Ore in storage but no Coal. That's worse than before I attempted my fix. The foundry I'm working on now has better chance of success as I've dedicated a special train to drain off its excess Ore. (For some reason most foundries tend to end up overloaded with Ore, though there are a couple of exceptions where the opposite is true.) I've not the game running in the background so I can keep an eye on the train and shut it down once equilibrium is attained.

In conjunction with the above I've done a good bit of track rerouting and replacing single track with double tracks on a number of industrial routes.

The game had an update several days ago. So far as I can tell it was bug fixes but no no features.

So I'm playing the original Dark Souls when I can't be on the PC since I relearned how to play these games with 3. Gotta say, I miss a lot of the newer features and I'm glad some features of this one were never carried over/got streamlined.

One thing I noticed is more common in this game than its sequels is narrow corridors and ledges, the latter of which you HAVE to traverse over several parts of the game Anor Londo being one of the worst Also ground physics can be a pain sometimes, like slipping down a slightly sloped surface or getting stuck on a brick on the floor. There's also the lag. Holy hell the lag. Blightown probably has the worst lag to add to the small, rickety walkways and camera-obstructing architecture.

If there is one good thing I can say about this game, I guess it has to be how non-linear the game is compared to its sequels, especially 3. Enemy difficulty will get in your way, but I do remember sequence breaking quite a bit and getting the Rite of Kindling earlier than intended, for example. Starting gifts also make more of an impact, since you can get a skeleton key and a ring that lets you talk to an npc for more sequence breaking.

Buuut, I might end up quitting. I've gotten to the point where quicktravel is unlocked, but I forgot that it's only to specific bonfires and that...that's honestly kind of a pain since the second half of the game is the most open and involves the most traveling, often to places you've been to for unlocked areas. I'm also not looking forward to the Demon Ruins/Lost Izalith and the Bed of Chaos boss fight.

In all honesty, I consider this to be the least fun installment.

WHOOPS this was supposed to be an edit lol

It also has Laurentius of the Great Swamp and I love him.

Had I rough Mashinky day recently, due to errors in signal placement and in one case incorrect orders (pathing markers). I eventually sorted it all out, but not before losing two trains that collided with each other.

I'm to the point where there are few industries and no towns not serviced by one or more train lines. Well, discounting industries in odd, out of the way locales too far away from any viable destination to make a connection worthwhile. (Even those can be doable, but it ain't easy and not always worth the effort.) What I'm doing now is looking for inefficiencies and correcting them to the extent I can. (Sometimes there's simply no ideal solution.) That's gonna keep me busy for some time to come. And there's always riding the rails in first-person engine cab / rail car view mode. I never tire of that. Never.

Early on I make what proved to be an grossly incorrect assumption. I thought Forests, with a Charcoal Burner add-on in place, would adequately substitute for Coal Mines as a supplier for coal for Foundries. Turns out a Forest's coal producing ability is minuscule compared to what a Mine can output. It can in no way proved enough coal to match the iron ore provided by an Iron Mine. Before learning this I had set up a few elaborate Foundry hubs with Forests as their sole coal supplier. Those Foundries hardly produce enough iron bars to justify their existence. In a case or two I've at least partly resolve this by bringing in mined coal from far away. In at least two cases I've not yet found a workable solution. Problem is, those Foundries are too far away from any coal mines not already dedicated to another Foundry. I'm not giving up on 'em yet, but admit properly fixing those is a long shot.

Checked Steam right before I went to bed last night, 24 Jan 2018. Since buying Mashinky on 6 Jan I've played it 235 hours!!!!! I know I play it a lot, but 235hrs in just less that three weeks??? Holy smokes.

Speaking of which, since yesterday morning's posting I got a lot accomplished. Largely resolved my dilemma with that one Foundry, and improved two other Foundries. In the first case, it involved creating a super long new double-track train line. Right now I've got four trains running on it making resource deliveries, and make be able to throw in a fourth. The old forest-to-foundry line it replaces and been scrapped though I now use its tracks to collect iron bars from the foundry and take them to a toolworks for conversion to silver tokens. The little bit of coal that forest produces now goes directly to that same toolworks for conversion to coal tokens.

Disaster struck my Maskinky world first thing this morning. Both auto-save 00 and auto-save 01 were corrupt and wouldn't load. Those are the only saves the game keeps of its on accord. Luckily I had my own self-made save that loaded fine. Sadly, it was three days old. I lost a good bit of progress. Spent from a bit after breakfast until now restoring those missing new train lines I remembered. I'm almost certain there's at least one more line to restore, but I can't for the life of me recall what or where it was. Lots of my Foundry fine tuning was lost as well. I made a stab at correcting a few of those too.

I even managed to add a new short distance two-city passenger line. I'd already made a station at one of the two locales for Box delivery. That being the case, I figured I might as well add passenger service to that same Station.

This is the second time I've experienced corrupt saves that won't load. First time, only auto-save 00 that was bad. Auto-save 01 was made only a few minutes earlier so no big deal. The game is alpha after all. Still, I'd hate to lose a world I spent so much time building. Even once this map gets as fine tuned and finalized as I can make it, I'll still derive much pleasure from it riding the rails along my various routes in Engine Cab Mode.

That is what I hate about games that only use an auto save. It is pure stupidity.

@Decrepit - Yeesh. This sort of thing is what drives me to make hard saves regularly and live in fear of games that do this. They should at least have some sort of backup function built into it. (But I guess the Alpha part somewhat makes sense)


Anyways, on the subject of highly unstable save mechanisms, I'm taking some time getting used to Oblivion again. Specifically, I'm getting used to Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul. It got a big update since the last time i played, but I still haven't really learned how to work with the existing ones. So today I tamed a golden retriever puppy that was hanging around Chorrol. :U I named him Concrete and fed him a piece of meat and now he's my best friend. Pets in this system seem to be the "fighty" kind, so I think in time he'll grow up to be like the dog from Fable 2.

I get the feeling Concrete will only be the first of tamed animals in my posse

Also I'm doing an Integration: The Stranded Light run and uh...yeah... (There HAS to be something messing with the mod NPCs' faces, since some screenshots show them with better proportions)

Cab view from a BR-3 pulled timber train, stopped at a signal awaiting its turn at a Toolworks. Already offloading is a coal train pulled by a Prussian T3. The BR-3 is one engine that offers excellent views from inside the cab, rather than needing to lean out a window. (Not that there's anything wrong with leaning out a window.) These first-person cab-view train rides are one of my favorite aspects of Mashinky. Oddly, almost no YouTube Mashinky LPer seems to care much for cab view. They certainly spend little to no time there.

As to game saves, Mashinky DOES provide an easy to use manual save function. I seldom used it because Mashinky's auto-saves proved themselves reliable in the past. Since that no longer seems to be the case I've began manually saving after significant progress and at the end of each play session.

Wow, really nice picture! I'm sure my brother would love this game!

Today's largish scale Mashinky project was a vanity affair. Connected an untapped forest far from any sawmill to an unused mill far off indeed, on the other side of a sizeable mountain to boot. What's more, the sawmill wasn't near any toolworks. The already in use toolworks I ultimately chose was of course on the opposite side of that same mountain. That mountain is the chief reason I decided to go through with the project. I'd built only a couple of tunnels before, none long. This project gave me the opportunity to bore two, side by side. The two single-track lines can't justify their expense, their engines eating more in operating costs and is earned per run. Still, both lines hold scenic interest when viewing via engine cab mode. Too, I hate to leave an industry untapped.

Otherwise, I fine turned the trains on a couple of industrial lines so that they now work more efficiently.

I installed several performance enhancing mods on my primary Oblivion installation, housed on my secondary computer. Observed my avatar and his ward travel to the Imperial City to solicit tasks for their upcoming Leyawiin trip, return to Weye to gather Wolfgang and Groucho, and prepare to head out on patrol.

Though that computer houses my beloved Soundblaster X-fi sound card, the sound I hear is decidedly sub par, coming from speakers built into my Viewsonic monitor. Yuk! Can't justify sinking good money into decent quality powered speakers (or a power amp for the existing speakers I have onhand) since that PC is used so seldom. Too, I'm used to my "new" rig, which makes the lowish FPS of Oblivion on the other PC all the more apparent. (It rarely bothered back when it was my primary machine.)

Finished Dark Souls. Easier than I thought, but then I was playing a Sorcerer (for the first time in the game, mind you). Still, the second half is the least fun Dark Souls experience I've ever had and I wish I could change the death notification on the 360 from "You Died" to "You Fell" I think the only boss that was as hard as I remembered it (even without OP spells) was Manus. He's just mean and I ended up flat on my ass several times from his attacks.

Anyways, started Dark Souls 2 and hearing the Majula theme brought back a lot of memories. I think 2 might be my favorite overall Souls game, even though 3 improves on a lot of things. Hell, I think 2 even has animations 3 doesn't (or I never noticed) like how your character visibly has to catch their breath after using up their stamina. Or the noticeable change in posture when in combat. Then there's also the fact that its lore doesn't rely on the first game's lol.

I'm trying a Cleric, but right from the get-go I can tell I'm going to make him into a Hexer (Hexes as a magic type being unique to 2, since in the other games they're split up into the other 3 types as "dark" versions of the magic instead)

Clerics start with decent strength, but not enough to wield their starting weapon with one hand. Their Dexterity is abysmal, which means you gotta buy a shield if you want something you can use right away since the first shield you're likely to find is a buckler. Also, it turns out that somewhere along the way, the number of casts for Lightning miracles were reduced in order to make the spells stronger but they completely forgot to buff the spells and they allegedly never did

So black magic it is.

Had another frustrating case of Mashinky non loading auto saves. I thought I had at least one good self-made save, made not long before, to restore from. Nope. Lost a good 3-4hr play session, during which two new lines were constructed and I ironed out a few delivery issues on existing lines. The good news is that, having constructed those two new lines once before, I knew what I wanted to do so that construction was relatively quick and painless the second time round. Well, except for a connection to one of the pre existing receiver stations. I'm sure I made improvements to several of its older connections while adding in the new line that first time. The second time I look and looked but couldn't see an easy means of making things better, so left old lines as they were.

One of my Mashinky pet projects is the manipulated growth of what I deem my Mashinky Metropolis at the map's northeast corner. (The game itself doesn't use the terms north, south and so on.) Beginning life as two small towns that eventually began merging together, I at some point took over and now attempt to control how the combined city grows.

In Mashinky, towns usually expand after taking a certain number of train passengers. Or receiving so many boxes or pieces of mail. But people moving is the easiest way. However it's done, once the magic number of transported people or goods is reached, a new house spawns along a road. If no road exists, a new road section is spawned to hold the house. (Sometimes roads spawn in such a way that further town growth is blocked.) In this case, I took matter into my own hands, laying roads when and where I want 'em. I also lay train tracks and position train stations in the growth area so that I eventually have something of an inner city train shuttle line.

Here's the "Metropolis" as of 31 Jan 2018. My road and track laying can easily be seen in various locales. The station furthest northeast was until fairly recently sort of out in the boonies, with no house in its areas of influence. I was quite pleased yesterday to see that the city has now almost overtaken that station. Trackwork at the city's northwest corner is very rudimentary at the moment, with no new roads in place. Once the east fills sufficiently I'll add those western roads (along with two new train stations) and let growth begin there. I do not intend for the city to grow any further west than that. Nor will it grow further south if I can help it.

Ended my Mashinky day yesterday carrying out an experiment I've wanted to try for some time now. Selected a bare spot of land along the map's "western" edge, added a fully equipped train station, roads, track, roads, and lastly plopped down a "box" store within the station complex. Created a train line connecting a box producing factory to the newly build station complex. Returned to the area not long after box deliveries to the new site began to find several homes already spawned. Success!

Here's an image of the new "town" with those few spawned homes in place. The rear end of the Train Depot seen at screen bottom abuts the maps western edge. My thought is to eventually create a series of smallish towns along the map border as a means of generating extra income from passenger traffic (and to keep the game interesting).

Addendum:
Spent a while this morning adding a station at the very northeast corner of my Maskinky Metropolis. It belongs to a passenger line snaking in from cities to the south. It is not part of the inner city shuttle line, though the two lines meet (as separate tracks) at station 130. To establish a better illusion of distance while in first-person cab-view mode the train now initially bypasses station 130, stops at the new station, then hits 130 on the way back. My expectation is that once now barren streets fill with housing the fact that I have a lot of stations within easy walking distance of each other will be sufficiently disguised. (A lesson learned from model railroading and TES Morrowind.) Here's Mashinky Metropolis northeast section as it appeared this morning, showing new track work and station. Notice that, in comparison to the Metropolis image posted yesterday, a station I then mentioned as being almost overtaken by dwellings is now most definitely submerged in housing.