Octopus Overlords

My desktop has become littered with the icons of games that I've picked up for free from Twitch, Epic Store, etc. None of them are ever games I'm interested in playing right away, but are more "I might get around to them someday" type of games.

I should probably give one or two of them a shot at some point.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:12 am My desktop has become littered with the icons

I love icons. There I said it.

I've always called them icons. Is there some other term I'm supposed to be using?

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:34 am I've always called them icons. Is there some other term I'm supposed to be using?

I think Blackhawk is reacting the implied lack of organization of having crap all over your desktop. Shortcuts is the term I would general use, but they are icons representing shortcuts so I wouldn't judge.

coopasonic wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:15 am

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:34 am I've always called them icons. Is there some other term I'm supposed to be using?

I think Blackhawk is reacting the implied lack of organization of having crap all over your desktop.

Ah, got it.

If it makes you feel any better BH, all the icons are very organized in neat rows in the top right corner. I've been tempted to delete the ones I know I'm unlikely to get around to, but am afraid that I'll forget that I even own the game.

I've always seen my desktop as a 'to do' list. This PC. Recycle Bin. If there is anything else on there, there is something I need to do. Programs go in the start menu or subfolders therein (I use Start10.) Games go in Playnite, a single psuedo-client that merges all of the other clients, emulators, and manually added games.

There is nothing worse than wanting to launch X and having to search through 40 desktop icons!

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:27 am There is nothing worse than wanting to launch X and having to search through 40 desktop icons!

Except maybe spending gaming time fixing games

There is nothing worse than wanting to launch X and having to search through 40 desktop icons!

Me and Im pretty sure others with a lot of icons know exactly where each one is though others looking in wouldn't.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:27 amThere is nothing worse than wanting to launch X and having to search through 40 desktop icons!

40 is nothing. One of the owners of our company has so many icons on her desktop that they don't all show and have spilled off the side, only to be found if you open Windows Explorer. The Desktop is her default save location.

Well, it's not the desktop, but my wife puts every document she gets or creates in the My Docs folder. Without subfolders. I think she is up to three thousands documents without any file system except "I think I got it last September..."

I'm an absolutely obsessive organizer. Everything I lay my hands on I organize. Board games. Shortcuts. Painting table. Kitchen. Disorder makes me nuts.

In my defense, I was only talking about 10-15 game shortcuts, not 50.

i had to restart Firefox the other day, as i had 257 tabs open and it was bogging down my system (24GB of RAM).

FWIW, Stardock Fences for desktop allows you to declare fences that new stuff automatically got sorted into, and you can define several of them so maybe have DOC go into one, Excel go into another, PDF yet somewhere else, and so on. Got it as part of Lifehacker bundle way back when, costs $9.99 with 30 day free trial.

https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/download

I've put about 20+ hours in Chariots of War in the last few days. It's nice to go back and play an easy game once in awhile even if it is repetitive.

I have 265 hours in American Truck Simulator, and 635 hours in Euro Truck Simulator 2. You could say I've clocked in a lot of miles.

I challenge you all to suggest a simulator or sandbox game (not a management sim or city/park builder) that I will actually like a lot. The game EVERYTHING came a little close for about 30 minutes. The hurdle for me is the absence of story, but someone here must be able to convince me that I'm missing some sandbox or sim game with compelling emergent game play.

Just Cause 2?

JetFred wrote: ↑Sun Jul 21, 2019 11:43 pm I challenge you all to suggest a simulator or sandbox game (not a management sim or city/park builder) that I will actually like a lot. The game EVERYTHING came a little close for about 30 minutes. The hurdle for me is the absence of story, but someone here must be able to convince me that I'm missing some sandbox or sim game with compelling emergent game play.

How about Elite: Dangerous? I recently installed it after acquiring the commander edition cheaply during the Steam summer sale, and have found it to be surprisingly enjoyable. Here's a write-up that elucidates some of the more recent content added to the game.

American Truck Simulator or No Man's Sky?

American/Euro Truck are fine. I really don't count driving games but of course that's arbitrary of me. Elite is a good idea, but for some reason I've just never been hooked by any of the epic space simulators like that or X.

Got a little bored with Battletech, decided to play Van Helsing with gamepad. It's fully supported. Works great except for minor bugs. Every once in a while, game just freezes. *sigh*

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:27 am I've always seen my desktop as a 'to do' list. This PC. Recycle Bin. If there is anything else on there, there is something I need to do. Programs go in the start menu or subfolders therein (I use Start10.) Games go in Playnite, a single psuedo-client that merges all of the other clients, emulators, and manually added games.

There is nothing worse than wanting to launch X and having to search through 40 desktop icons!

Play a game? I collect them now. Organizing and shuffling them around is part of the joy

morlac wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 4:08 pm

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:27 am I've always seen my desktop as a 'to do' list. This PC. Recycle Bin. If there is anything else on there, there is something I need to do. Programs go in the start menu or subfolders therein (I use Start10.) Games go in Playnite, a single psuedo-client that merges all of the other clients, emulators, and manually added games.

There is nothing worse than wanting to launch X and having to search through 40 desktop icons!

Play a game? I collect them now. Organizing and shuffling them around is part of the joy

welcome to the post-gaming life. your company includes viewers of 'let's play' videos and twitch streamers. oh, and reading forum posts about games...

'players' of idle games also welcome.

welcome to the post-gaming life. your company includes viewers of 'let's play' videos and twitch streamers. oh, and reading forum posts about games...

Its freaky how accurate that is. And sad.

I picked up Middle Earth: Shadow of War on a Steam sale ages ago and finally got around to starting it this week. While the combat is pretty fun and it really nails the LotR atmosphere, the fact that you can't walk two steps without having to chop through at least 25 trash mobs is so gorram annoying.

I'm also not sure I get how this whole Nemesis system works. I identify the bosses, kill them, and then they simply get...replaced? The "Army" screen (the one with the identified bosses and the silhouettes of the ones you haven't met yet) just seems to replenish with new guys every time I kill one. Is that what is supposed to happen, or am I doing something wrong? Is it just a neverending stream of mini-bosses from start to finish? Because that seems kinda meh.

It also seems like I'm supposed to be able to somehow turn the orcs to my side. The "Garrison" screen shows ways I can level up my "orc followers", but I haven't yet figured out how I'm supposed to recruit them. Using that possession skill doesn't ever work on bosses, but maybe there's some skill I haven't unlocked to do that yet. I'm about 3 hours in, just unlocked the second area (Cirith Ungol?).

You're still in the 'tutorial.' There will be an event that unlocks the actual gameplay. And yes, killing them just gets them replaced. Them killing you makes them stronger. You'll be given the tools to leverage them rather than just cycling through them.

Thanks, I'll stick with it then. Was starting to feel like I was just on a mini-boss treadmill, which wasn't terribly compelling.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 11:24 amthe fact that you can't walk two steps without having to chop through at least 25 trash mobs is so gorram annoying.

This was my experience, too - and I think this is adjusted as a game difficulty thing. One of the lower settings is a lot saner, but still challenging. I'm pretty sure that I had started in "Hard" when I played because I had played the first one and knew generally what to expect. I spent a stupid amount of time chewing up nameless Orcs coming at me in droves. When I turned it down a notch I suddenly had freedom of movement back.

I'm playing on Easy, so I don't think that's the case. The mobs are less threatening and it likely doesn't take as long to mow through them, but they're still about a bazillion of them every three steps. It's obnoxious.

Yeah, my impressions were the same. I loved the first game. The second one I had to stop playing after ~8 hours. Not sure if I'll go back.

A lot of those orcs are completely optional. You don't need to fight them all, and later you will get enough abilities to just run past or over them rather than stomping through the middle of them.

Yeah, you don't have to fight every Orc you see, or that sees you. Steam says I put 55 hours into the game. It didn't get annoying until the final phase of the game which they supposedly reined in after I abandoned it.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 12:25 pm Yeah, my impressions were the same. I loved the first game. The second one I had to stop playing after ~8 hours. Not sure if I'll go back.

I really enjoyed the combat, but more than anything I enjoyed turning Orcs and seeing what powers they acquired as they progressed when they beat me - or I beat them. I had a couple that plagued me mercilessly and thought that was pretty cool.

coopasonic wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2019 5:32 pm Yeah, you don't have to fight every Orc you see, or that sees you.

So much this. You might stop and kill the named Orcs, but I mostly just ignored the yard trash unless you had to clear an area for a quest.

Rockstar support. What an effing nightmare they've been. I've had an issue in GTA V where the textures aren't loading properly, and I've probably spent 15 hours implementing their 'solutions over the past month and testing them. I started by telling them that this problem persisted over a clean install of the game and a clean reinstall of Windows, and began after a video card upgrade. I've since had three separate support techs tell me to try reinstalling my video card drivers. Clean. Install. Windows.

And still, I jump through their hoops, try it out, have the issue, and report back. Over and over. The last couple of suggestions have me about to come unglued. One Rockstar tech told me to turn on Nvidia's DLSS feature for GTA V. Fine. The problem is, GTA V doesn't have a DLSS feature. It's never been supported or implemented. You'd think they'd know this. The most recent one, however, takes the cake. The told me to downgrade Windows 10 from DirectX 12 to DirectX 11. DirectX 12 is built in to Windows 10. Even if it were possible to remove it (it's not), if I somehow figured out how to do so, it would disable my operating system.

How stupid are these people?

The problem, for those who are curious:

I think I'd be talking to the video card people at this point.

I've considered that. I just haven't had the oomph to sit down and go through all the Rockstar communications to put together a summary of what's been tried for Nvidia.

No mods installed? I remember about a year or so ago a streamer I watch was having a similar issue going on and he had LSPDFR installed.

I've never had one installed.