You feel the tug of an unseen hand, pulling you toward something. What that something is, you are unsure. The one thing you do know is that it is immensely powerful—powerful enough to control the creatures of the sea, powerful enough to drive men mad. It calls to you, draws you in, compels you. As the darkness hangs over you and you reflect on the things you have seen, the things you can never unsee, you feel a hollowness inside yourself. You feel empty, as you have always known it would end this way, and you are powerless to stop it.
As you navigate the unyielding darkness that surrounds your boat, you make one last effort to grip your sanity and hold off the unstoppable madness breaking through. For you have ventured too far from the safe haven of port, and the night has ensconced you. The lights on your ship have gone dark, you see things that aren’t there, and more terrifying yet, there are things there you cannot see. You race for the safety of Greater Marrow, guided only by the lighthouse, a beacon of sanity, illuminating the sky. You race forward, hoping to arrive with a grain of your sanity remaining, for the light will save you. As you dock your small vessel, you feel the release of the eldritch horrors pulling on the final thread of your mind, you are safe—for now.
I am back, and I’ve made a large number of changes and updates to the blog. I wanted to quickly go over the changes and what you can expect to see in terms of content on this site moving forward. First and foremost, you will notice that we have a new look. The old style was fine, it was very simple, and I wanted to keep the same vibe, but have it be a bit more pleasing to the eye. Secondly, I’ve added support for webmentions. This allows better cross-linking with other content creators we link to, and who link to us. This will help create a more connected, platform-agnostic internet. I highly recommend looking into it. I’ve also added more standard features for a blog: you can share links to social media from each article, and there’s a tagging system to make finding related articles easier
It’s been a few weeks since I last streamed on any of the platforms where I create content. The reason for this is that I’m currently playing Starfield, and Starfield does not run optimally on my PC. However, I am prioritizing playing it despite these issues. As many of you already know, content creation is not my primary source of income; as a result, I can prioritize games I want to play over those I can stream. I’ve encountered two major issues with Starfield since its release. The first is that it causes my graphics card drivers to timeout. Consequently, if I were to stream the game, I would constantly crash in the middle of the stream, resulting in a poor experience for viewers. This is particularly concerning because, supposedly, Starfield was optimized for AMD cards, and I have an AMD card. The second issue is that, for some reason, when I attempted to stream Starfield, it maxed out my CPU, causing dropped frames. Unfortunately, Starfield, while playable, is not suitable for streaming. Despite these issues, I am enjoying the game. I’ve already invested about 50 hours into it, and it’s a solid, enjoyable game. I plan to continue playing it a bit more, but I’m also eager to get back to streaming.
There are countless chatbots you can use for your Twitch channel. Each of these performs specific tasks very well, but all of them tend to fail at giving the ability to create complex, custom functionality. In my quest to find a chatbot that can integrate with Spotify’s API, I found that creating my own bot was likely the best option, and much easier than expected.
I recently discovered Stacklands thanks to everyone’s favorite Irish YouTuber, Francis John, and it has been an absolute delight. In Stacklands, you are tasked with managing a village in a two-dimensional world where each entity within the village is represented by cards. As you progress through the game, you open packs to discover new cards. When stacked, the cards interact with each other; for instance, placing a villager on a tree will yield wood, while a berry bush produces fruit. Building is handled in the same manner—combining wood and stone creates various buildings, from lumberyards to mess halls. The ultimate goal of the game is to continue building your village while equipping your villagers to fend off interlopers emerging from a mysterious portal, a product of combining mysterious artifacts with your temples. The game culminates in a boss battle that tests your level of preparedness and evaluates whether you’ve appropriately transformed your simple villagers into battle-ready warriors.
When The Cycle: Frontier was released into early access, I was filled with excitement. As an avid Escape from Tarkov player, I was eager to find another extraction shooter to immerse myself in. However, despite my initial enthusiasm, I soon discovered that The Cycle lacked some crucial elements that would have made it a truly enjoyable experience. Even in its early stages, I realized that this game was not the right fit for me. The Cycle fell short due to the absence of key elements that were necessary for it to be a quality game which I could continue to go back to. As The Cycle: Frontier was the first casualty in the wave of Extraction Shooters to be released and fail, I feel like I am beating a dead horse writing a post like this, but I never got to hit the horse the first time, so I am taking my shot.
Many adventurous programmers have examined the pricing of rare items in Path of Exile, and their thoughts turned to machine learning. Unfortunately, it simply doesn’t work for a variety of reasons. Machine learning is designed to assess predictable outcomes, but due to the nature of trading in Path of Exile, the outcomes are unpredictable. In this article, I intend to explore several reasons why machine learning in Path of Exile is not feasible.
For over twenty years, I have been immersed in the world of Magic. Although my approach to the game has evolved over time, Magic has been a constant presence throughout my adult life. However, recently, Magic: The Gathering Arena has left a bitter taste in my mouth. It’s not just Hasbro’s relentless pursuit of profit and excessive card releasing that bothers me. While I could separate the company’s actions from the game itself, I find myself unable to endure the combination of Arena and rampant capitalism. Please understand that my grievances are personal, and if you enjoy playing Magic: The Gathering: A Deckmaster Game, I have no intention of convincing you otherwise.