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efaardvark

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Posts posted by efaardvark

  1. Updated all my minecraft mods to current.  Not much different but a few bugs between Iris and the Distant Horizons mod were squashed.  Shaders are a little more usable now, though there's still a distinct visual change at the boundary where the built-in and DH rendering meet, especially when you're looking down from a height.  Still quite playable, and it doesn't require an expensive GPU to make it work.  I've got a Radeon RX 6600 in my system for instance and this is what my game looks like @1080p..

    image.thumb.png.67e54c13d74ab43ec08a2d190769a05a.png

     

     

    A still screenshot doesn't really capture it though.  If you haven't seen DH in action, take a look at this....

     

  2. 15 hours ago, Sakura said:

    Throw a grenade at them. They would have no choice but to notice me then. 

    I think I’d actually be more likely to first notice the grenade itself, then in finding someplace to hide from the blast.  Not the sort of situation where I’d be spending a lot of time looking around and wondering who threw it.  :D 

  3. Inspired by this thread I decided to go looking for some of my old gaming materials.  After taking appropriate precautions (mask, flashlight, food for a week, signal flares, holy water, etc.) I dug through my closet.  Remarkably, I did manage to not only survive and find my way back but I even came back with a few of the desired items.  This in spite of being ambushed and distracted by a box of books I hadn't seen in ages.  (I set a couple of them aside for later. :D )

     

    Spoiler

    Unfortunately I did not find Ogre.  I don't remember but it may have succumbed.  Microgames weren't the most robust in the first place - basically folded paper in a plastic baggie - and Ogre was one of the ones played quite frequently.  I did find GEV and Rivets however, along with a number of other microgames and my original Space Quest rulebook.

    IMG_2683.thumb.jpg.8f19c4cd10805a9daa9baed8557fbd4a.jpg

     

    Spoiler

    I also found my original boxed set of Traveller rulebooks, plus a couple of supplements.

    IMG_2681.thumb.jpg.3833c755a046aae161649bb164467b97.jpg

     

    Fun times.

  4. I used to play a lot of tabletop RPGs, like D&D, though not that ruleset so much as the Fantasy/Hero rules.  Also Space Quest (Tyr, not Sierra) and especially Traveller when we were in a SF mood.  I also owned pretty much every MicroGame that came out.  My favorite there was Ogre. (Plus the sequel/update GEV and the lighter Rivets.)

    Unfortunately all that pretty much ended after ‘82.  I graduated HS and the gaming crowd I played with dispersed into adulthood and went their separate ways.   This was well before the ‘Net became generally available - not even email - so that was kind of the end of the tabletop gaming era for me.

    Personal trivia fact.. my “efaardvark” handle is a holdover from those times.  “Bersig” was usually my main character name in fantasy RPGs and “efaardvark” was for the SF ones like SQ.  When online gaming became a thing I started using “efaardvark” because it was usually available.

  5. 3 hours ago, Nebulous said:

    Hi all, hope you're doing well.  Don't forget to wear green a week from today :P

    Oh no!  I almost forgot!  Thanks for the reminder, though unfortunately that means another load of laundry.  🍀

  6. Feeling tired and rushed.  Weekends are never long enough anyway, but here we do that daylight savings nonsense so I lost an hour of sleep last night.  Feels like a lot more.  I just finished my morning coffee and here it is already noon.  I want to relax and maybe do some gaming but I have adulting to take care of before the weekend is over and I have to go back to work.

  7. So I've been using the distant horizons mod for a while now.  I think it's a keeper.  It really changes the game, especially if you like to explore.  I find I don't get lost nearly so easily for one thing.  :D  Wandering around is a lot easier when you can use distant objects such as mountain peaks for navigation.

    The mod doesn't really hurt performance either.  In fact, I find I can boost my FPS since I can drop the built-in render distance into the single digits and let DH take care of the rest without sacrificing anything but a trivial amount of quality in the distant chunks.  For example, as you can see in the screenshots I'm using a built-in render distance of only 8 with the distant horizons mod's render distance set to 512 and I'm still getting >60fps @ 1920x1080 with a x64 texture pack.  I'm using the x64 version of the popular "Faithful" textures.  Actually I've set the DH render distance as high as 2048, though at that point it does create significant performance issues.

    My system isn't crazy powerful either.  I've got an 8/16 core CPU from a few years ago (2nd-gen Ryzen 7 2700X) and my GPU is a Radeon RX 6600.

    They say a picture is worth 1000 words so check these out...
     

    Spoiler

    First is the view with DH disabled; basically the minecraft view that everyone is familiar with ..

    image.thumb.png.ff9851c9c316606556bd065310a5c479.png

    And here's with DH enabled....

    image.thumb.png.19ff1a2c0848916883b0cdc042c863d6.png

    Note the cherry grove in the distance, just above the crosshair...

    image.thumb.png.d2f206b1abf678bc474dab3bbeab041d.png


     

    Spoiler

    This is a good one for showing the difference in detail between the high detail of the built-in renderer in the foreground and the reduced detail of the DH-rendered blocks in the background.

    Again, here's the DH-disabled version to start with..

    image.thumb.png.abee793ae7dd7c66fb2005198406ad86.png

     

    And now the exact same view but with DH enabled... suddenly there's an ocean and mountains!

    image.thumb.png.23702b020ff2fef7fe230d7960bbee79.png

    Note the grass blades and the tree leaves in the foreground vs the more solid blockiness of objects in the distance when I zoom in with the spyglass.  Things like grass and flowers are not rendered, though their color will still modify the color of the rendered block.

    image.thumb.png.56c822034056872950b07cc0acdc6069.png


     

    Finally here's one zoomed-in on an area of transition from built-in renderer to DH-rendered blocks.  Again, note the tree leaves and grass in the bottom part of the frame and the lower details in the upper part.  You can also clearly see where the texture of the stone surface changes.  (Sorry for the blue streaks.. It started raining.  :D )

    image.thumb.png.5d0e2f84db8aaedc4f3ed598d07f4664.png

  8. I also thought it looked interesting but I have only seen the first 3 episodes.  I binge-watch stuff after the season ends.. I'll go back and finish it then.

    • Like 1
  9. "All things in moderation."  Don't eat too much.  Don't pay games all night.  Don't drink too much.  Overdoing things is bad, especially if it leads to habitual, self-destructive behavior.

    But if you never (over)do anything then that's kind of boring.  Sometimes you just have to remove the limiters and go for it.  Who knows?  You might even learn something... even if it's just, "yep, that was a bad idea".  :D

     

    • Funny 1
  10. Not where I am - I'm at the other end of the State - but you know the recent California rains have been a bit on the extreme side when kayaking in Death Valley becomes a thing.

    Down here in the south we're just having wandering hillsides moving around and making a muddy mess of things, a few pothole issues, and one sinkhole that tried to eat a horse.

    So far we've received almost 10 inches (35cm) of rain here in Los Angeles from the recent storms.  Yesterday and today was pretty nice.  Sunny and warmer at least.  The next wave of rains are due to start up again Sunday tho.

    image.png.63c8370589d1927d0b24d51a834425bb.png

     

  11. Started my 3-ep preview run(s) for the currently-airing cohort.  I picked Lvl 99 Hidden Boss first to sort of get it out of the way.  (I'm the kind of person that eats the peas first and saves the cupcake for last.)  I almost didn't start it in the first place for many reasons - isekai (into a game no less 🤮), school kids, demon lord, and several other tropes that have been done to death - but for some reason I did.  And almost instantly regretted it because they started with Alicia.  I have a policy that if I start the first episode of a season then I have to at least watch the first 3 before I decide to quit but I was quite tempted to break that rule here.  In spite of the episode summary text I literally had my mouse over the "back" button when they switched to the actual main character.  She turned out to be a kuudere and that plus a change in the tone of the humor made things a little more fun so I reholstered my mouse and got through the first 3 episodes.  I still can't say I'll get back to it at the end of the season but I think I could enjoy it if the rest of the series kept with the same sort of humor.  I'm curious if they'll do a twist ending too.  Ideally one that completely bypasses the painfully trite "main" (game-wise) characters.

  12. I was inspired by the IM-1 misson (that tipped on its side during landing) to play some more KSP.  Judging by the number of life-imitating-my-KSP-play moments lately - JAXA a couple weeks ago for instance, and now IM-1 - it seems that KSP is actually a pretty realistic simulator.  :D  I mean, ask any KSP player and they'll tell you that trying to land a vehicle on the Mün that's taller than it is wide was just asking for trouble, right?  🤣🤣🤣

  13. On 2/20/2024 at 6:15 PM, viruxx said:

    I had just graduated HS in 2005, and started going to a local community college immediately in the fall afterward, majoring in computer information systems/technology.

    I went for C&IS at the CC as well.  At least to start.  The local CC offered transfer credits towards the University of California system and UC Davis had a good C&IS program.  The CC was a lot cheaper however, both tuition-wise and because it was close enough that I could save money by continuing to live with the parents, so my plan was to get the general-ed and low-level degree-related stuff out of the way at the CC and then transfer to Davis when I got to the higher-level material.  It didn't quite work out as planned but I'm not complaining.
     

     

    19 hours ago, Animedragon said:

    I had just bought my second car, and like my first one it was second hand, yeah, I was late into the car-owning thing!

    I've only owned 3 cars in my entire life, including the one I'm driving now.  And that one I only bought because a tree fell on my last one!  I tend to take pretty good care of my cars and drive them until they wear out.  Or a tree falls on them, whichever comes first.  :)

    20 hours ago, Animedragon said:

    I was also happily in my 18th year of a job that I initially took as a 'stepping-stone' into what I thought would be a better job but after just 1 year I decided that I liked and enjoyed the 'stepping-stone' job much more than the one I was originally aiming for so I stayed with it for my entire working life.

    As it turned out things didn't go as I'd planned either.  I was 2 years into classes at a community college (see above) when I took a job doing work a trained monkey could have done.  It was only a summer job and was only supposed to last for 90 days, but it led to an unexpected job offer, which led to what is coming up on a 40 year career.  Never did get around to attending UC Davis.  :)
     

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