I might have a Transport Fever video ready for upload within a week. It won't be part of my Scenic Excursions series. As mentioned, I've no new fully detailed routes to film, and don't expect to any time soon. Instead, it'll be a Work-in-Progress video, showing detailing along the Henley ConMat Facility to Eastleigh Rail Line. Much is already in place. Enough for an interesting ride, imo. Truth to tell, I had no thought to upload an in-progress route until 'filming' the run this morning for my own amusement. I found train spotting and interactions so enjoyable I decided then and there to share it.

I've attempted several TRS19 passenger runs these past few days, for can't hold focus long enough to finish 'em.

My existing characters all have mod list issues. I uninstalled Ordinator in favor of Vokrii and haven't respecced my perks on them.

I'm not attached to many of them. One was more or less complete.

I suffered from CTDs too, which surprised me, because in 2018, when I was playing Skyrim for the last time, I didn't have CTDs with this character. Turns out, that I installed a newer version of Visual C++ for another game in the meanwhile. Installing an older version seemed to fix the CTD bug. At least until some orphaned script will kick in.

Lol. That's strange as crap.

You wouldn't think that'd do it.

There's no way I'd figure it out on my own. But when it crashed, some error code popped up, and googling it lead me to this solution.

Huh.

At least you fixed it!

"And now you are mine; MINE!!!!! BWAAHAA!!!!"

Other than a few Daggerfall Unity sessions, recent gaming activity has centered around creating a new Transport Fever Scenic Excursions episode and uninstalling / unsubscribing from a number of TpF mods. As to the latter, they are mostly non British steam locos I no longer run and don't plan to use again. Sad to say, the deletions don't help my super long load/save times or increasingly stuttery game play. As to the SRA episode, my fear is that YT compression won't treat it kindly, most so that with my last several uploads. We shall see.

With some hesitation I unleash a new TpF Scenic Excursion. We travel between a Facility near Henley to a Receiving Station at Eastleigh Outskirts, delivering ConMat. Unlike common practice, the route is not fully detailed start to finish. Nor does YT compression treat it kindly. Still, enough detailing exists to justify an upload, and we get it decent train spotting:

Transport Fever Scenic Excursion ep26 - ConMat for Eastleigh, unfinished work-in-progress

Played a little of the free open Beta for Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Needs some minor tweaks to the camera control but so far I love it.

My TpF project to remove all non British steam locomotives nears an end. No such locos are seen on the map. Most are removed from my load-order. Many are unsubscribed to at Steam Workshop, or if non Workshop have been deleted from my TpF mods folder. One exception: a Mikado mod, no longer in use, won't allow the map to load when switched to inactive. And there are of course some vanilla steam locos that can't be gotten rid of.

Moved Time Warp from 1932 to 1937, making available several worthwhile British steam locos. When creating the map, I originally thought to set it to 1928. Decided I'd miss out on too many nice locos, so have been running at 1932 until now.

Added scenery between Eastleigh and Morley. I'm satisfied with some of it. Some I'll likely nuke and start afresh.

On going Skyrim bender interrupting my regularly scheduled WoWing.

Hehe.

Had you asked this morning, I'd have said I'll likely not have anything worth filming for a new Scenic Excursions episode for a month or two at the earliest. Yet here it is mid-evening and I've a completed episode in-the-can, barring unnoticed text errors. It's a short freight route I've considered filming off-and-on for months, but always considered too unpolished.

That I filmed it today is a fluke, nothing more. Intended to add scenic detail along a whole other route. Only, nothing added pleased me. Eventually gave up. Decided to relax riding a train or two. Selected the route in question. Selected one of its two trains. Selected my standard loco-side camera position. Began ride.

It did nothing for me. Was gonna call it quits. Out of sheer boring I clicked through other camera positions. Stopped at one with the camera positioned in front of the loco, slightly to its right, pointing toward the loco nose. Didn't seem all that appealing for a 'lengthy' ride. Gave it a go anyway. To my very pleasant surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Enough so, I filmed the entire run in that position. Playing back results several times. Decided to make it the central segment in a Scenic Excursions episode. The rest is history.

Likely won't be uploaded for another day or two. Need to write description and create YT thumbnail.

Speaking of YouTube, researching video TAGS I was surprised to learn YT doesn't place much emphasis on 'em. According to them, a clip's written description is far more important to search results. Bearing this in mind, I translated several TAG key words that rarely produce search results into description text. BINGO! A search with those words now finds my videos.

I played a bit more Belzebub, the HD remake of Diablo I. I finally got my archer down to level 12, where the Succubi start to appear. That triggered an extra quest (Belzebub adds a lot of new content) to find and kill Andariel, who was added by Blizzard in Diablo II as a somewhat different character. This one is just a large Succubus mini-boss. My version, in the mod I'm making for Skyrim, is perhaps half-way between the two.

The other thing Belzebub did is increase the spawn rates of enemies in general, so even normal difficulty is a grindy challenge. It's often necessary to quit and restart, as the mobs are camping the entrance to a level, and there's no way to survive the swarm. On the other hand, repeating the higher levels so much boosts the overall experience gained, so you're stronger when you do move on.

A new Scenic Excursions episode, utilizing what is, for me, unorthodox yet effective camera positions. It is less afflicted by YT compression than my vids tend to be. Otherwise, its YT description says what little needs be said:

Scenic Excursions ep 27 - Food for Sittingbourne

I have been planning on buying Assassin's Creed Odyssey for a while now. I have just been waiting for it to go on sale. UbiSoft now has it for %60 off. So I bought the gold edition (the standard game + season pass) last night. It took about 12 hours to install it (over the web of course). It is over 80 gig!

So now I need to buy a new hard drive. Best Buy and Micro Center have 2 TB ssds for $200 and change, so tomorrow I will go get one. Unfortunately I do not have enough ports left on my motherboard to add another drive. So I am going to have to swap one out for the new drive. My smallest one is a 256 Gb ssd. So that one will go. I'll have to move everything off that drive first however. Then make sure I assign the new drive the same letter, and move everything back. Then I'll reinstall ACO onto that.

I currently have ACO on my C: Drive, that also has Windows. But it just about takes up all the space I had left there. I would prefer to keep that drive clear of games. But last night it was literally the only drive I had with enough free space. I don't really plan to start playing ACO just yet. I am still in the middle of doing Morroblivion with January. I just bought it because of the good sale.

But I did start ACO up and played it a bit to get a feel for it. The controls are confusing. I have no idea how to do any of the fighting, and there is no real tutorial on what buttons do what. You play Leonidas for a bit, but all the game tells you is the left mouse button is a light attack, and the number 2 is a charge. I spent most of my time just mashing buttons until the 'tutorial' was over. When I do get down to playing it seriously, I will have to look up some guides to see how things work.

OTOH, the game is gorgeous. I love how the world looks. It is so colorful and detailed. That was one reason I bought it. It was actually reviewed on an Archaeology podcast I listen to. There is a Discovery Tour that lets you just visit the sites in the game without really playing, just to see them, and hear about their history. I tried that a little at looked at the Akropolis in Athens. Wow, just breathtaking.

I'm not sure, but if you can, try it with a controller perhaps? I had to cave and get one for mh:w because the pc controls were just bad.

I found a page about the PC controls. Even with just a cursory glance over it I am seeing several differences between what the page says, and what the game itself was telling me while I was playing it. For example, the game told me the right mouse was a heavy attack. This page tells me it is aim. Which probably explains why it was not doing anything in my melee fights.

So I just have to look for some external sources to tell me how to play the game.

You might be able to change the controls too. Might want to check into that.

I bought my hard drive yesterday and swapped it out. Going from 200 some gb to 2tb made plenty of room. I redownloaded ACO on the new drive last night. Again, it took about 14 hours. The game is 89 gig and change! Because it's on sale now, it also came with Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered, and AC3: Liberation for free as well. So I am downloading them both now. That is only 35 gig.

If you are interested in the game, now is the time to buy it. 60% off Odyssey and AC3 for free. I bypassed Steam and bought it straight from Ubisoft. Even if you buy it off Steam, you still need the Ubisoft front end manager Uplay. I did not see the point in having 2 DRMs for a single game.

I remember when I bought my first PC late 1989. It came with a 60mb (yes, mb) hard drive. All my computer-literate friends, who made do with dual floppy drives, teased me for wasting so much money on something I'd never be able to fill. I also remember how exciting it was to see PC memory modules drop to only $100US for a one megabyte stick! And when, upon release of 2x speed PC CD drives, 1x CD drives dropped to only $300US (from $600US). The good old days.

I remember our first PC. 4 mb RAM, 128 MB hard drive. Mom paid a load to put 12 mb RAM in it and my ex husband put a 256 mb drive in it.

Was the first computer sold in town with a CD drive.

Price? Just over 3 grand.

Real time simulation RPG games; Might and Fealty, and Star Wars Combine.

Since I don't have much free time as I used to back in the day, these kinds of games are perfect for me at the moment

I've been having an itch lately to go back to TESII: Daggerfall and Fallout 3 lately. The former I'd have to download on this computer, and sadly I would not have my character that I played the game with before. Now that I've done the main quest, I'd just go mess around in a bunch of the kingdoms I haven't really gone to before (even if they all get pretty same-y after a while). For the latter game, the atmosphere and setting is starting to pull me back, and its been a while since I romped through post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C.

But my playtime has solely been devoted to Elder Scrolls Online the past couple of months. It probably will be for a while longer, but the pull of Daggerfall and FO3 may soon be too much to resist. The downside to all this is that I have other games I never played before that I either have only barely started or not at all. But I suppose that is a good problem to have.

I played some Fallout 3 just last week. I love that game so much! It was just putting some places on my map; going through the northwest area of the Wasteland = it is so beautiful at night; and you really feel like you are totally alone out in the far off places like that (until some Mole Rat or Mirelurk charges you, lol). It is one of the absolute best games Bethesda ever produced imho.

What kept happening while playing was that whenever I wanted to look at my map I instinctively clicked on the "M" (and kept clicking on the "I" to look at my inventory too, lol).

But despite that; it was an Awesome nostalgic night of gaming = and I actually did stay up all night playing it, too; lol.

Yeah, Fallout 3 is a bundle of joy. If I go without Gunny and the radio turned off, the sense of being alone in a dangerous wasteland really hits me.

Too bad it's too much fun listening to 3-Dog whilst running around and picking fights with everything that moves

I keep going back to Diablo 1 (or rather Belzebub, the remake for modern hardware) to make sure I have the right vibe in my Skyrim mod.

It has probably made me add too many enemies, as the Belzebub mobs really do swarm you to death!

I started a new Skyrim playthrough with Lucien and Kaidan. This could be interesting.

Still mainly play Transport Fever, despite the game becoming something of a stutter-fest about the time Win10 updated itself to v1903. An irony is that I can now film several train routes not scenically ready prior to the onset of stutter.

More irony, I spent almost the entire waking day preparing two new TpF Scenic Excursions episodes. Or rather one excursion split between two episodes. Not due to length of journey per se. The route's not that long. I've 'filmed' longer journeys without a split. Thing is, YouTube compression rendered episode 26 pretty much unwatchable. Am gonna try to lessen compression degradation by splitting the ride between two relatively short episodes, reducing upload file size. Plus apply a 'trick' I learned of a while back but never experimented with...until now. I don't expect much to come of it. Whatever the results, it surely can't be worse than ep26. (Famous last words?)

Even should everything be ready tomorrow evening I'll not upload until Friday or Saturday night. Learned my lesson with ep27. Posted it mid-week. It didn't receive as many views as episodes posted at the start of a weekend.

Trying to get into Fortnite on the Switch...it's growing on me.

Another Transport Fever Scenic Excursions episode, rather half-episode, is online ready for viewing. We revisit the Passenger Service ridden ep14...which I refer to as a 'blasphemy' episode as track-side scenery between Eastleigh and Morley was at that time totally absent. That's no longer the case. More info can be found reading the video's YouTube description.

Transport Fever Scenic Excursions ep 28a - Morley-Sittingbourne Commuter Service, Part 1

While this video’s footage is captured at 1080p, 60fps, it was rendered and uploaded at 1440p, as I understand YT compression is less harsh with motion footage at the higher resolution. Here’s my dilemma. My monitor is 1080p. Worse, my internet connection is too slow for 1440p playback. It’s three seconds motion, lengthy buffering pause, three seconds motion, lengthy pause, rinse and repeat ad nauseam. I need feedback. How does the video look at 1440p, especially but not confined to those with a 1440p (or better) monitor? How is it at 1080p? Does it seem visually improved over past episodes, especially those like ep26, which YT compression hit pretty harshly, imo. At any rate, feedback is appreciated, either here or in the video's comment section (or both).

Plants vs Zombies again!

Played through The Outer Worlds yesterday, and very much enjoyed it. Feels kind of like a cross between Fallout and Mass Effect, back when Bethesda and Bioware still had the ability to make solid games.

Decently written dialogue, interesting world-building, fun characters - including an asexual character with a romance story arc that was actually very well-written and made me feel all gooey and happy inside. The main story is actually interesting enough to have kept my attention all the way through, with plenty of options open to the player which will change the outcome of individual quests and the ending of the game as a whole.

The only major downsides to this game are the lack of customisation (most weapons and armour sets look almost identical) and fewer side-quests than I would like. Still plenty to do of course, but you will probably have everything wrapped up in about 18-20 hours, with little else to do outside of questing.

Overall, about what you'd expect from the good folks who brought us Fallout New Vegas. Not a bad start to what could be a great new franchise of single player RPGs.

Did you have to buy it through the Epic Store? I have heard so many bad things about that, I am not willing to buy the game through it.

In other news I decided to stick a fork in January's Morroblivion game, and move on. I played a little bit of her in Skyrim to get a feel for her there. I bypassed the main quest since I do not like it much. Instead I started her at The Throat of the World, at the tear in reality. It seemed like a good place for her to shift through time and dimensions to reach Skyland. Walking down the mountain and bypassing the windy areas was no problem. The Ice Wraiths were real trouble, but she killed them both. The Frost Troll was unbeatable. So she had to run away from it down the mountain. The first thing she did was meet Klimmek, and agree to take the supplies back up the mountain to the Greybeards.

Then I also spent some time with January in Oblivion. I think I will do the main quest in this game, because I don't hate it. I went through the tutorial dungeon and then the obligatory run around the city looting every crate and barrel. I found 18 repair hammers that way, in addition to the 2 from the tutorial dungeon (I think there 2 in there). The crew of the Marie Elena yelled at her every time she took stuff form the containers near their ship. Even though I did not get the red hand of ownership on them. It did show up in my stats as two instances of theft. But they never attacked, and I did not get a bounty for it.

Anyway, I had a lot more fun with Oblivion, so I am going to stick with that game for now.

Yep, had no problems with it so far. I believe the game is also available through the Microsoft Store for those with Windows 10, though I've not used that service before and can't say how good it is.

I’m waiting for The Outer Worlds to be released on Steam or GoG. I just don’t trust Epic Games Store, no matter what their “owner” might say. By then it should have lots of patches and maybe a DLC or two to make the experience better.

I have the hardest time checking text narrative for TpF Scenic Excursions episodes! I've had one I hope to publish this coming Saturday morning ready since last week. Only, I'm not convinced its text passes muster. Problem is, I find train rides so relaxing I tend to fall asleep within a short time. Don't wake up until the vid's almost over. If I don't fall asleep, it's because I'm so engrossed in the ride I totally forget I'm supposed to be checking text. Either way, it doesn't get done.

Otherwise, I've spent most of my gaming time this week with modded Daggerfall Unity.

Same here. But only because I do not like the idea of downloading it off the Pirate Bay. Since that would be illegal after all. And no one should ever do that, especially without using a VPN to hide their IP.

Frankly I feel that game companies that participate in timed exclusives on questionable platforms deserve to get their games pirated. This includes those idiots that decided MechWarrior5 will be an Epic Store one year exclusive.

The righteous cross themselves upon publication of a new Transport Fever Scenic Excursion episode. In it, we conclude the railway journey begun episode 28a, returning from Sittingbourne to Morley.

TpF Scenic Excursions ep 28b - Morley to Sittingbourne Commuter Service, Part 2

As with ep28a, while captured at 1080p the video was rendered and uploaded at 1440p in hope of better withstanding YT compression. I upped bit-rate slightly this time round, but have neither monitor nor internet speed capable of testing results at 1440p. I will say that, to me, these two episodes (or half episodes) seem decently in-focus at 1080p compared to many of their predecessors. Unless I delude myself.

I thought it was available on Steam? It's available outside the Epic store as far as I'm aware, YouTube dude I watch had a discount link for it.

I've debated picking it up. Then Blizzcon happened, and I'm hyped to Hate for Diablo 4 and World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

HAZMICK !!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lol!

I've been mostly playing Overwatch and Fortnite on the Switch.

Need to start another playthrough of Star Wars: Rebellion.

Speaking of Star Wars I'm also playing Jedi Outcast on the Switch. Ah it saddens me to play this game knowing the characters from the Expanded Universe are no more .

I’m really hoping they release Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy on the Switch too! That was my favorite JK game.

Oh yay!! They are bringing Academy to Switch!

I'll tell ya one thing I'm glad Nintendo patched in that invert look in the control option. Made the game easier for me to play. Funny thing is playing without cheats is a whole new experience, I think I used to play with infinite health but doing that changes a lot of things like redoing certain areas that I'd would cheat through. Outcast is tough I'll give it that but its Star Wars and a fun one at it .