Octopus Overlords

We lack a good catch-all for gaming thoughts, rants, and ideas that don't justify a topic all to themselves. I figured Gaming in General would be the right place, as it could be used for everything from PC to console to mobile to analog games.

So, have at.

...and the rant that I had the urge to rant, but didn't want to dedicate a whole topic to.

I was ~80% of the way through Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, trying to catch up on the series so that I can try out the shiny new offerings last night. It was a through playthrough, too. I had all of Rome renovated, all of the side quests and shop quests done, all of the lairs save the last, and all of my assassins maxed.

This morning I woke up and went in to finish it, only to discover that my 360 had decided I didn't really need my save files.

Thats when you call it completed and move on. Or go to YouTube, watch the ending, then call it complete and move on.

Yeah, if I can't get a solution, and it doesn't somehow resolve itself in the next day or two, that is exactly what I'll be doing.

So random!

I've got a thing about keeping my hard drive lean. When I finish a game, and I don't expect to play it again soon, I wipe it clean. My D drive, dedicated to games, is 931 GB in size and has 800 GB free. I don't think I've ever had more than six or eight games installed simultaneously. Maybe ten.

Do other people do this, or do you have fifty different games installed at all times?

Hundreds installed. My Steam games are on a separate 500 GB drive for ease of upgrade and backup.

Games: 351
Installed: 221

I try not to install sequels when I haven't finished the first in the series. Unless there are cards involved.

Holman wrote:So random!

I've got a thing about keeping my hard drive lean. When I finish a game, and I don't expect to play it again soon, I wipe it clean. My D drive, dedicated to games, is 931 GB in size and has 800 GB free. I don't think I've ever had more than six or eight games installed simultaneously. Maybe ten.

Do other people do this, or do you have fifty different games installed at all times?

I do the same, although my HD only has about 100 GB free for other reasons. I rarely have more than 5 games installed and play very linearly - I'll finish one before moving on to the next.

I have about 20 installed. Many that I just don't want to move to the abandoned category but it's almost a foregone conclusion. I almost never go back to a game. I keep a few lightweights installed (Faerie Solitaire for instance) for 10 minute gaming sessions.

I have ~20 installed. I generally play a game, backup the saves, then uninstall it. I keep games installed that I'm not playing if:

A) I intend to play them next
B) They are in-progress and I still need to finish them
C) They are open-ended games that I still fiddle with from time to time (MMOs, multiplayer, civ-types)
D) The install process is such a pain that it isn't worth it to uninstall them (Elder Scrolls, Fallout.)

I think my practice comes from the early days of hard-drive computers, when I thought I heard that a full drive was less efficient than an emptier one. (Presumably the squirrels have to work harder to spin more data.) Is there any truth at all to that?

Holman wrote:I think my practice comes from the early days of hard-drive computers, when I thought I heard that a full drive was less efficient than an emptier one. (Presumably the squirrels have to work harder to spin more data.) Is there any truth at all to that?

My understanding is that at very low hard drive space you hit functionality issues (due to virtual memory / magic gnome depletion, I believe) but that before that very low threshold there isn't really an issue.

Holman wrote:I think my practice comes from the early days of hard-drive computers, when I thought I heard that a full drive was less efficient than an emptier one. (Presumably the squirrels have to work harder to spin more data.) Is there any truth at all to that?

Its generally true that HDD becomes very inefficient above 80 to 90% usage because of of excess fragmentation. If the available space to write a file is in smaller pieces and the file has to be broken up, then multiple seeks are required to either read or write to the file. Much of the latency in an HDD is from these file seeks. (It takes more time to move the heads to find the file fragments than it actually does to transfer the data).

Magic gnomes can also be an issue in some cases...

Cylus Maxii wrote:

Holman wrote:I think my practice comes from the early days of hard-drive computers, when I thought I heard that a full drive was less efficient than an emptier one. (Presumably the squirrels have to work harder to spin more data.) Is there any truth at all to that?

Its generally true that HDD becomes very inefficient above 80 to 90% usage because of of excess fragmentation. If the available space to write a file is in smaller pieces and the file has to be broken up, then multiple seeks are required to either read or write to the file. Much of the latency in an HDD is from these file seeks. (It takes more time to move the heads to find the file fragments than it actually does to transfer the data).

Magic gnomes can also be an issue in some cases...

Yeah. The worst is when you have your operating system and your other stuff on the same logical drive - the OS will create and delete a lot of temporary files which will gradually make your hard drive look like swiss cheese as far as contiguous blocks of free space are concerned. Holman has done the right thing by having a dedicated gaming drive, although you really don't need to leave more than 20% of it free at a time.

It's also notable that fragmentation is not an issue on solid state drives (in fact, if you defragment an SSD all you are doing is wearing it out).

Confession time.

I played through all of Tomb Raider (2013) with a gamepad on the PC. I'm currently playing Skyrim on the PC with a gamepad (and SkyUI). Absolutely loving the experience.

Fired up Saint's Row The Third after some time off and found it's better on the PC with the gamepad.


For my next trick, I will praise the iPhone and become a vegan.

Back when I only had one HD I kept it slim, but now that I have two I let the second one hold all my music and games. 451gb of 700gb free.

Edit - I want a gamepad.

LawBeefaroni wrote:Confession time.

I played through all of Tomb Raider (2013) with a gamepad on the PC. I'm currently playing Skyrim on the PC with a gamepad (and SkyUI). Absolutely loving the experience.

Fired up Saint's Row The Third after some time off and found it's better on the PC with the gamepad.


For my next trick, I will praise the iPhone and become a vegan.

*sniff* Tell the other teenagers we said hello.

Yeah, there's a lot of games (mostly ports from consoles) that are just better with a game pad (at least in my opinion) as you're not fighting against what the designers considered the natural control choice

Holman wrote:I think my practice comes from the early days of hard-drive computers, when I thought I heard that a full drive was less efficient than an emptier one. (Presumably the squirrels have to work harder to spin more data.) Is there any truth at all to that?

I got a solid state drive back when it was only 279 GB. I have to delete modern games after I finish them - only 89 GB free. I could get a new HD, but I'm building a new rig so not much point. In the meantime I am playing old school SNES games on an emulator, which take up negligible space.

LawBeefaroni wrote:Confession time.

I played through all of Tomb Raider (2013) with a gamepad on the PC. I'm currently playing Skyrim on the PC with a gamepad (and SkyUI). Absolutely loving the experience.

Fired up Saint's Row The Third after some time off and found it's better on the PC with the gamepad.

[highfive] They're games and they play better with a GAMEpad, not a KEYpad...er...keyboard.

Seriously, though, most games today that also appear on consoles are probably designed with a gamepad in mind. I play Borderlands 4 player co-op on pc every week and I even play that with a controller.

I just realized I almost went two years without buying anything on Steam. I've made a few GOG purchases, but mostly my games have been via Humble Bundles that activate on Steam, and one Amazon package that activated as well. Up until yesterday, my last steam purchase was 1/1/2012.

LawBeefaroni wrote:Confession time.

I played through all of Tomb Raider (2013) with a gamepad on the PC. I'm currently playing Skyrim on the PC with a gamepad (and SkyUI). Absolutely loving the experience.

Fired up Saint's Row The Third after some time off and found it's better on the PC with the gamepad.


For my next trick, I will praise the iPhone and become a vegan.

I bought a game pad. I have yet to open it. Maybe I need to breakdown and get a gamepad type game... I could then load it on my tablet, and then HDMI it out to my TV... Hmmm...

I only seem to play TF2 during the Christmas Sale. Weird.

Do you play on any particular server Pyterkub? I have started playing again and am having trouble finding any decent servers.

Listening to this episode of Roguelike Radio, I was anazed to hear that blind people can play roguelike games! They use a screen reader that recites what's on the screen. At 1:15:45 in the episode, a blind player demonstrates how it's done with ADOM. The screen reader sounds like gibberish at first because it's so fast, but eventually you adjust and can kinda tell what's going on.

I just bought a 3 TB drive for my desktop(Less than $ 150.00), to pair with my 700 GB HD, and my main drive only has windows installed and a few other programs that want to be on the 'C' drive.

So I always keep my games installed, and even install "Free to play MMO's" in case some friends want me to play.. Steam makes it so easy to move the games that I usually back-up the entire structure to my NAS drive I have so that it makes it easy to reinstall windows and get the games back.

I received a decade-plus old insurance settlement just before Christmas. It wasn't much, but it was enough to add in a few presents for friends and family I'd had to limit to a card before, and to replace a bunch of stuff around the house that was broken or worn out (14 year-old skillet, nine year old bath mat, etc.)

I had to hold off for a bit to see how everything would work out, but I was able to save just enough to get a moderate Mobo/CPU/RAM upgrade for my PC. The hardware I had in there was low-end when I last upgraded to it five years ago, and I haven't able to meet minimum requirements on new titles for the past six months or so.

It was probably a bad decision. I probably should have sat on the money 'just in case', but I was on the edge of having to give up a hobby that has kept me going for even longer than the aforementioned skillet, so I caved.

Now I'm trying to balance buyer's remorse with the idea of running Skyrim at double-digit framerates!

No regrets, Blackhawk!

I have enough in my Steam wallet to buy Skyrim: Legendary Edition. I do not have a computer that would run it. Thoughts?

LordMortis wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:Confession time.

I played through all of Tomb Raider (2013) with a gamepad on the PC. I'm currently playing Skyrim on the PC with a gamepad (and SkyUI). Absolutely loving the experience.

Fired up Saint's Row The Third after some time off and found it's better on the PC with the gamepad.


For my next trick, I will praise the iPhone and become a vegan.

I bought a game pad. I have yet to open it. Maybe I need to breakdown and get a gamepad type game... I could then load it on my tablet, and then HDMI it out to my TV... Hmmm...

Just save yourself the complications and send me the game pad. Problem solved!

miltonite wrote:Do you play on any particular server Pyterkub? I have started playing again and am having trouble finding any decent servers.

It's been random. Tried getting into the GWJ games, but the server was empty on Monday around 7:30 pst. Open to suggestions.

Pyperkub wrote:

miltonite wrote:Do you play on any particular server Pyterkub? I have started playing again and am having trouble finding any decent servers.

It's been random. Tried getting into the GWJ games, but the server was empty on Monday around 7:30 pst. Open to suggestions.

Back when I used to play (before hats) I played on Texas Team Players. No promises its still a good place to play but might be worth checking out.

...of course you provably already know about that miltonite, since we played there together.

Archinerd wrote:

Pyperkub wrote:

miltonite wrote:Do you play on any particular server Pyterkub? I have started playing again and am having trouble finding any decent servers.

It's been random. Tried getting into the GWJ games, but the server was empty on Monday around 7:30 pst. Open to suggestions.

Back when I used to play (before hats) I played on Texas Team Players. No promises its still a good place to play but might be worth checking out.

I used to have a blast with the guys from Nervous Energy (search the group on Steam). Most of them are Brits and the language can get colorful, but they're friendly and easy to play with / against.

Blackhawk wrote: I had to hold off for a bit to see how everything would work out, but I was able to save just enough to get a moderate Mobo/CPU/RAM upgrade for my PC.

24 hours into the setup process. Back when I used to reinstall XP annually, it was annoyance to get everything from Install A to Install B. Now that I'm sitting on a four year old install Windows 7, it is a pain in the ass. I have hundreds of gigabytes of stuff that needs to come over, that I need to verify came over correctly, and that needs to be put away. I have hundreds more that I need to hang on to just in case I need the data for some game or other at some point in the future.

Well, my thoroughness has paid off, mostly. I'm up and running. I've tried all of my in-progress games and managed to save all of my progress and settings, and games I haven't played in a while still have their progress and settings in place.

One exception: Skyrim. I seem to have missed a Nexus Mod Manager folder somewhere, so it won't recognize any of my mods. Since they're built into my save, and since it would be a nightmare to try and rebuild everything, I think I'll just start over.

An analysis of Metacritic.

Their conclusion:

The data at Metacritic leaves much to be desired and seems to be heavily biased. When critic scores do not comply with user scores in the majority of cases, which has been shown in this paper, and the selection of critics is seemingly under no formal control, the validity and accuracy of the data is low. Caution is necessary when using Metacritic information to guide your own decision to buy or not buy a game. Until there is more transparency on how this process takes place at Metacritic, more transparency on the flow of funding from which sources and the observed biases are removed, the database is of limited use for the end-users.

I haven't read the entire 30-page paper, but it still serves as a reminder that Metacritic is only one data point. When I see people make their decisions based entirely on Metacritic scores ('I don't buy anything that's less than 80 on Metacritic!' or '93 on Metacritic! Sold!'), it makes me want to go into the used bridge business.

Steam finally decided my 9+ years of service means I can use their Market again after not buying anything for a year put me on probation. Time to go make $0.30 or so!

Edit - $1.60something so far, thanks largely to a $1.40something sale of a DOTA 2 weapon I forged during the holiday sale. Being willing to price everything for a penny less than it is already listed for means my stuff tends to sell. Thanks, Steam, for allowing me to turn stuff I don't care about until real money I'll sink back into your corporation.

Edit edit - Eight of the nine things I placed sold within 90 minutes, and all were only priced one penny less than my competitors. The last one is that Surgeon Simulator wallpaper that I put up for $0.01. Someone will buy it eventually....

Edit edit edit - Someone actually bought the wallpaper for a penny. Medieval: Total War 2 just gave me three cards for playing yesterday, so if I can sell two of them I'll have $0.34 more to spend on Steam (I'm keeping one of the cards). Someday maybe I'll make enough to buy a game. Someday.... (4th Edit) - Sold both cards for $0.17 to the same person. Odd, that.

I was playing a game today, and had slowed down to check out the scenery. I was really enjoying the sounds - birds singing, breeze blowing. It was time to quit, though, so I exited the game.

The sounds continued.

I realized that I'd actually been listening to the sounds outside my window.

That says something about something.

My boardgame dream is someday to enjoy a full six-player game of Here I Stand or Virgin Queen with people who know the period. I fear this will never happen.

Holman wrote:My boardgame dream is someday to enjoy a full six-player game of Here I Stand or Virgin Queen with people who know the period. I fear this will never happen.

YES! Here I Stand, anyway - I don't have the Virgin Queen. And I don't care if people know the period.

Maybe if I ever have a weekend away from the family I'll try to put that together.

El Guapo wrote:YES! Here I Stand, anyway - I don't have the Virgin Queen. And I don't care if people know the period.

Maybe if I ever have a weekend away from the family I'll try to put that together.

I don't know what either of them are, but I bet I'd enjoy them....