Oh yeah speaking of WoW new Avatar time, today's avatar my Blood Elf Paladin Thedra.

Hehe. Nice.

I've not contributed to this thread in some time for a simple reason. I'm in the midst of a gaming hiatus begun some weeks ago. It hit out of the blue, the side effect of a beneficial health improvement. The short of it is that, following an extended period when I was getting little sleep due to unendurable pain while lying on my side, I discovered that my lower back has at long last 'recovered' to the point I've able to lie on my back again for the first time since c2012/2013! What's more, neck and shoulder pain weren't nearly as severe while lying on my back as they are when on my side. Lying on my back wasn't overly comfortable, but it wasn't overly uncomfortable either!

Due to this, I began devoting much of the day to long reading sessions, which take the place of gaming. (I've always been a read-while-lying-down person.) Despite a few thankfully brief setbacks, this period of semi-bless persisted until just a few days ago. Then, a new pain set in, in my upper back along the spine, which makes lying on my back once again highly uncomfortable, often unendurable beyond a short about of time. I still hope to discover some minor adjustment that allows me to sleep in reasonable comfort, or at least bearable discomfort. I have a long-scheduled appointment with my clinic's 'Sleep Center' mid month, but expect little from it. Its purpose is to check for sleep apnea. While that's important, I suppose, it's physical pain that's the root of my sleep/lying down woes.

Enough whining. Thing is, even though I'm back to not being able to lie down as much/long as I'd like, I've not yet felt any compunction to return to gaming, instead spending my time on YouTube.

I'm playing Broken Sword II after completing Broken Sword I. Both are point'n'click games from the 90s. Remastered versions have been released too, but I'm playing originals. Occasionally I also play New Vegas but lately I've found Broken Sword(s) a bit more interesting and especially mentally challenging.

Still waiting for a World of Warcraft: Shadowlands beta invite...

Sighs.

I've been playing Nioh 2, a Souls-like game made by Team Ninja, taking place in Sengoku era Japan. I have also been playing Mount and Blade: Warband with the amazing Floris mod pack. I know it's an old game, but I only started it a few months ago and I'm hooked.

In hindsight I should've picked up Bannerlord during the Steam summer sale. Oh well, I'll get it next sale.

Bannerlord is the sole game I'm even mildly interested in acquiring at the moment. Then again I felt that way about its two predecessors and never took the plunge.

The one potentially upcoming title I have any interest in is from the small team spearheaded by former Bethesda employees who hope to create a modern 'spiritual' successor to Daggerfall. That's likely so far done the pike as to be meaningless for now.

I'm also waiting for vampire the masquerade bloodlines 2.

Same. I will definitely check out reviews first though. It has some big shoes to fill!

It does.

Also hear it's coming with trigger warnings.

It's a M rated vampire game, likely full of sex, drugs and blood. Do you REALLY need trigger warnings? You should know what to expect.

I suspect that, like the original, it’s going to deal with certain themes from real life society that are considered to be “controversial”. Hopefully it’ll stick pretty close the way the original Bloodlines handled satire of social issues and Bloodlines 2 won’t feel like we are sitting through a sermon. If you can watch the news and hear about a social issue, I’m expecting it’ll be touched on in the game in some way, for better or worse. Honestly, as long as there is no mention of COVID f-ing 19, I’ll be happy (although the Brotherhood of the 9th circle side quest is one of my favs!).

I would not mind if there is a terrorist group called Confederation Of Viral Information Dissemination that is planning to release a biological weapon to kill all vampires.

Lol!

That'd be amusing.

On an aside, three friends of mine got wow expansion beta.

One, is bent out of shape after his guild fell apart, and he won't play it or live version.

Two rarely have time to sit and play much less bug test a beta.

Meanwhile me, with 15 hour days available, can't get an invite to save myself.

Bring in the popcorn lads. I got the salt factory going.

Awww that sucks. Hope you get one!

Playing buncha Duke Nukem 3D!

I spent a while playing Skyrim yesterday while trying to get a Kaelyn the Dove soundset working. Sadly, I have made very little progress with it so far. I have all the sound files in the right places, with the right names, etc... but they almost never play in the game. For a while I thought they might be the wrong bit rate, so I changed them to match those of the Viconia soundset (which do work). But still no joy.

And now it seems to be working, after doing nothing different from yesterday.

Ooo that’s super frustrating. C’est la vie, eh?

With Heart of Winter put on ice, I am not sure what to start next. I am a little tired of the infinity engine style strategy games right now. I feel more like a 1st/3rd person action game. Renee's Miss Viscous puts me in the mood for some Fallout 3. January has not explored there yet.

OTOH, it has been a very long time since I have done either Mass Effect or Dragon Age: Origins. Naturally, January has not done either. I am thinking for Mass Effect, January would be either a straight solder, or the Solder/Biotic hybrid. I think its called a Vanguard? For Dragon Age she would be a human Warrior, maybe the Champion specialization, since that is most like a Paladin.

I'm playing TES:O on PC and Fire Emblem Heroes and Tom Clancy's Strike Force on mobile.

Vanguard is one of my favorite classes in the ME series! That and Infiltrator, which is not a biotic using class.

What I really want to play is an Asari Commando. But of course the game won't allow you to do that.

Nope. If you want to play ME, you’ll have to settle with being a boring ol’ human.

At least you get a female option, which in my opinion is the best option, because Jennifer Hale is so much better to listen to than the male VA.

When I was looking at mods yesterday I did see some that allow you to play different races, Asari, Turian, etc... But they are just replacers for the player's body. The game still refers to you as a human.

The male voice actor is about as engaging as the teacher in Ferris Bueller who just continually calls out Bueller's name as he takes the roll.

I guess you could “pretend” that the other characters refer to you as what you are playing, but then the whole being a member of Humanity’s Navy as a non human might be kinda hard for me to ignore.

Also, Ben Stein says “Ow.”

I was wrong. I freely admit it. Ben Stein is a much better voice actor... My apologies Ben. You had a fun gameshow.

A remaster of the Nintendo64 classic first person shooter Perfect Dark... on... XBox360. Yeah.

Animal Crossing New Horizons I tried to fight it off but it was to much to resist.

I just did something rather foolish. (Well okay, I'm always doing foolish things.) I bought Train Simulator 2021 plus one of its DLC off Steam. This all came about after seeing a number of YouTube TS2021 videos that showed markedly better graphics than what I saw back when deciding between Trainz 2019 and TS2020. Some add-on Train Simulator steam locomotives look applicably better than their Trainz counterparts, thanks mainly to improved lighting and shadows. (Maybe more than that, but those are obvious.) What's more, TS2021 has a Steam Workshop component. I found some nice free add-ons there. Trainz still has TS2021 beat in certain aspects. That's okay, since I now have both. I just hope I enjoy the new purchase enough to get my money's worth out of it. <crosses fingers>

Blizzard has announced it's virtual BlizzCon for next year(February)! But still can't give us a date for the pre expansion patch with all the new stuff.

Typically they patch in an in game event and all the mechanics changes before the expack launches. Usually they give two week warning. They have not yet. And the expansion releases 27 October.... We're running out of time.

Oh and no beta access still. Lul.

But yeah still playing WoW with a touch of Skyrim. My game is slightly bugged and I'm bored of my current character but I dont want to fix my install because it'll break a large number of my mods...

Bug is where I start the game with a level up waiting for me, and I get super fast skill ups and less xp needed to level, so you level STUPIDLY fast. Only way to fix it that I've come across is to verify integrity of game files... which updates the game. My game hasn't been updated in about four months now and I'm terrified there's been a CC update since, which means my mods will break. I'm running a 270 something mod load order right now...

Sighs...

Right now I'm playing Animal Crossing New Horizon and Fire Emblem Three Houses on the Switch.

Black Desert Online! Last night in my daily rewards, I got this gorgeous new mount:


https://i.imgur.com/Xk5uKwG.jpg


WOO HOO!!!


Here is my main character:


https://i.imgur.com/WzzzzFL.jpg

I'm glad you're enjoying that new game! The game and your character (and horse) look very nice!

Wow mALX! Another mmo? You are going to be so busy!

Thanks, Acadian!







I've not been doing ESO much; just barely get on there to pay the horse training and this past week to do a couple Event things.

Oh I see. Is everything ok? Getting a bit “burned out” maybe?

Yeah, fed up with Zenimax "tweaking" of our characters so they can barely play. I tried "New World" during its free play 2 weeks; but didn't care much for it. I started Black Desert about a week or two ago; and it is the first game that has given ESO any real competition. I have been finding it very hard to go to ESO and play when my Templar 's jabby thing doesn't even work anymore and low level enemies are able to take her life now. Grrrrr.

Yeah that’s a bummer.

It’s cool that you found something else you like! Will you come back to ESO at least for Witch’s Fest and the New Life? I know Brenna and crew would be glad to see your folks!

Probably be there on and off; depending on what the Impressario has.

Let it be known that I, Decrepit, can't drive steam trains in Train Simulator 2021. Not yet. Either of two things happen during my feeble attempts. Trains either slows to a crawl and finally stops part way to their destinations or, if reached, don't come to a stop until far beyond station platforms. The latter will, I'm sure, iron itself out with practice. Of the former I'm not sure. Why? Because I've no idea what causes these slowdowns/stops. I suspect it's to do with coal/water feed, but the game's other decent training sessions don't address those. (Trainz 2019's training sessions do touch on fueling steam locos, if not in any great detail.)

Impressions so far. I prefer Trainz UI/keyboard controls. They're easier to work with. Also, TS2021's keyboard controls can't be reassigned!

Graphics wise, the nod goes to TS2021. (I've yet to figure out for to get high quality graphics seen in some TS2021 YouTube vids.) At their best, both are acceptable. Neither matches Train Sim World (which I rule out due to lack of steam era locos and routes) in this regard.

TS2021 has a Steam Workshop! I didn't know this until recently, as Workshop access required an extra step to find. The Workshop contains almost exclusively free sessions for pay DLC routes, but that's better than nothing. I've already downloaded a bunch of free sessions for the two steam-routes I own.

TRS2019 had no Steam Workshop, but offers its own Download Station with tons of free locos, wagons, accessories, scenery, and so on. The catch is that 'free' download speed is so slow it's impractical to use. We're talking dial-up! For decent speed one has to buy a "First-class Ticket" (as well as with several other paid-for options). These come in set durations, 1-month, 3-months, 6-months, 1-year. Very reasonably priced. But it's still a cash-grab.

Truth is, both are money-sinks, assuming you aren't satisfied with the basic starter packages. Most folk interesting in train/railroad simulation won't be satisfied.

TRS2019 seems the more glitch-prone of the two, but I'm not yet familiar enough with TS2021 to know for sure.

I've not much to say for myself. I continue to be inept at driving steam locos in Train Simulator 2021. I did, however, find a YouTube that covers properly 'firing' a steam engine, how to climb slopes, and so on. At the moment it's mostly Greek to me. I'll keep whistling away at it.

In other news, I just published a video documenting one of my DFU avatar's shorter dungeon crawls. A link is found in our appropriate sub-forum.

Addendum: Well, urk. Turns out that my recent issues playing Amiela was actually my fault. I must have had some kind of scroll to reset attribute points in my inventory and accidentally clicked on it at some point = her attributes were reset to zero! When I fixed that, she was back playing right again.

Anyway; I am much happier with ESO knowing it wasn't them that did Amiela's jabby-thing problems; lol.

They give everyone one of those at around level 43. You don't get any request for conformation when you use and it takes forever to put them back. I think about four or five of mine have accidentally clicked on them, and I've only wanted to use one once, when I switched Laurie to tank.

Yeah, I think this one was actually one of the daily rewards this month and I just forgot to put it into the bank or something. Thank goodness I didn't send the cussing bug report to the Devs like I intended to,

Playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the five billionth time lol. I can't help it I love this game, also there's a prequel coming out so that's another reason why I got this game again .

I'm still trying to learn how to drive steam locos in Train Simulator 2021, and remain as inept as ever!. At least none of my last three efforts ended in engine malfunction! That's an improvement, I reckon. Here's a couple of images of this morning's two attempts. All feature the same steam locomotive, a third-party add-on. It comes in quite a few variants. One attempt (which I bailed on a bit past its halfway point) featured the loco in its final years of service. The other (which I successfully completed, without honors) shows it in an earlier livery, at a time when in-service steam was better taken care of.

(image) BR N9 4-6-2 steam loco with coaches at departure station (image)

(image) BR N9 steam loco with coaches mid-route (image)

(image) LNER N9 4-6-2 steam loco with coaches at departure station (image)

(image) LNER N9 steam loco with coaches pulls it at destination station (image)


In other news, my DFU avatar attempted several Mages Guild assignments. The first was aborted almost immediately after acceptance, when we learned that it was one of those long, drawn-out, multi-phase assignments. Neither of us was up for that. I called a halt on the second, simple task because it was late in the real-world day, I was groggy, and due to that made a few dumb mistakes. I didn't feel right having my avatar pay the consequences. (None would have harmed his reputation in any way, but still...)

I haven't played ESO in so long now I don't even recognise the game.

Playing a bit of Driver on my Millennium puter. I have access to all the cheats and besides the lagging it's well good fun knocking those police cars over as if they were bowling pins

I remember that game, lol. Played it on the original PlayStation.

Ya can't win these days, it seems. When I ordered/purchased the TS2021 loco last month, the one seen in my recent thread post, I debated long and hard between it and a Highland Railway Jones Goods 4-6-0. Now that the month has rolled over, I decided to get the HRJG. Ordered and paid for it yesterday. Only, when I clicked its download link Avast popped up and blocked DL!

Here's where I made my mistake. I clicked off Avast's warning before absorbing what it said. No biggie I thought, I'll try again, read carefully, and write down Avast's warning. No such luck. Clicking DOWNLOAD now takes me to a conventional browser page stating that the download/URL is blocked, nothing more. I waited maybe 15min and tried again. Same result. I searched Avast and found that the site has been added to its blacklist. Except I can reach the site, it's various pages, and my user account page just fine. It's only that download that's blacklisted, or so it seems.

Now the really bad part. While I have an unlimited time period in which to download the loco, the company gives me only three downloads per product. I've now used all three. Even should I figure out how to unblock the download URL I can't download. I guess their site isn't sophisticated enough to recognize that my download attempts were blocked.

I shot an email to the company explaining all this, then maybe 20min later sent 'em another email with clarifications and corrections to my first email. Hopefully they'll sort it out for me. <crosses fingers> I'll not know until tomorrow at the soonest, they not open for business weekends.


Other TS2021 news. I can't couple/uncouple to save my life. TS2021 seems more forgiving than TRS2019 in this regard. I've taken the coupling tutorial numerous times. First time (several days ago) I passed, giving me a false sense of security. Today, I decided to return to the tutorial to hone my skills. Failure after failure, usually resulting in derailed cars. I finally did it right, luck rather than skill improvement. After that success I was too unnerved to attempt another go. I know it can be done. I've seen YouTube TS2021 videos that make it seem effortless. I'll keep whittling away at it, and hope for the best.

(TS2021 has what seem to me awkward keyboard controls. Coupling is SHIFT+CTRL+C. There's supposedly a mouse-click alternative, but I've not gotten it to work. That, however, is not the source of my coupling woes.)

Addendum:
I put in another longish coupling session. Better results this time. No car derailments. No bumping them hard enough to push out of coupling reach. Very inelegant, with multiple stops and starts before reaching the target cars rather than one smooth continuous glide into position.