Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I'm feeling a little bit of deja vu here. Just over two years ago, Anthem ran a pre-release demo of the game. There were some things I liked about it, but it had some definite problems and didn't really click for me. Fittingly (or sadly, depending on your point of view), the developers have just recently pulled back from work on the major revamp they were trying to pull with that game to make it... well... good. That leaves Anthem to languish in its current state with limited support and not much of a future. Well, Outriders just ran a pre-release demo and while specifics differ, playing a few hours of it has left me thinking I'll probably pass on this too. It's a third-person, squad-multiplayer looter-shooter. I like the story premise of the remnants of humanity settling a foreign world where things go wrong. There's a time skip early on that takes the player(s) from the first day of exploring the world to a few decades later when the settlers have degraded into

 When we got word that the long-talked-about remodel of our main floor was to start in two-and-a-half weeks, that started a bit of panic. That means relocating about 40 people, about 95% of which use internal network servers to do their jobs, for an estimated 6-8 months. Ugh. The downstairs should be safe to use, so the servers themselves can remain as they are and the people working there don't need to move. But there are only about five unused workspaces there. We have a few rooms of space there as well, but it's seriously under-wired for regular use and completely unfurnished. We do have some furniture around from closed external offices, so there's a little something to work with. We were also given some office space to use that's about three miles away, but currently lacks anything but power. So, yeah, several issues and not much time. Plus no solid vision/leadership. Trials of the Remote Office Ideal would be to be able to connect the remote office space to our cu

 Last night finished out the main campaign in one D&D game. The Storm King is returned to his throne, the manipulating dragon attempting to unseat him is slain, and the heroes reached 11th level, I believe. Overall, I enjoyed the experience as a social game thing, even if online. The game itself I may be a little more critical of (woo, pessimism!). Technically, we had some issues here and there, bouncing between Discord and Roll20 before settling on the latter. Two of the players are in the same place, which complicates the "cleanness" of headset use and led to some poor audio and feedback at times. And the DM frequently complained about wrangling things in Roll20's interface, especially lighting. Coupled with a DM who didn't quite have the improvisational confidence to spin off from the published campaign much, I had the feeling the game wasn't all it could have been. I think characters were a bit more than their combat capabilities, but only a bit. I would h

 It can be a bummer being the "IT Guy" to friends (or family) sometimes. I mean, I don't like being responsible for other people and their things, but mostly I'm really frustrated when I can't solve a problem. It feels like I'm letting down someone close on top of the basic annoyance of failure. My friend's computer really has me stumped. She got components for Christmas and put them together, but nothing powered on. I looked at it without much luck. The motherboard has actually been replaced twice now and it still doesn't work, but I cannot fathom what the issue is. Normally, when a computer won't turn on, I first blame the PSU. That seems one of the more failure-prone components in a computer. What happens? When all connected and the PSU switch turned on, there's an RGB light on the motherboard that comes on, but that's it. The computer itself cannot be switched on with the power button, the diagnostic error lights on the motherboard do n

 Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is just fine as a third-person tactical shooter. You've got a big environment with lots of different locations, though only a limited variety of enemies and ways they can be set up. Shooting feels alright whether sniping stealthily or in a firefight. The game looks pretty good, even if environments are reused in some cases. All that is okay. The really impressive part to me is the game options. There are a lot of things you can turn on and off from color-blind modes to various HUD/UI elements. You can even switch between a normal mode that has levels and rarities of gear drops and enemies or an "immersive" mode where you can swap attachments but a gun of type X is the same whether you just picked one up or loaded it at base. You can adjust your available health supplies and frequency of injuries. You can play multiplayer or have a squad of three AI teammates (the biggest benefit of which is some automatic enemy spotting and sync shots). But... I

So I was invited into a Godbound game online and, after some struggle to overcome inertia, convinced myself to give it a try. I had to reread a bunch of rules as my previous experience with them was focused on a narrower part of it (heroic mortals). Over a few days I settled on, and built up, a hengeyokai raven (tengu) thief. A character should have goals and a Godbound character should probably have particularly big ones, but the character didn't really feel like one to do nation-building. But... king-backing, maybe. So more a working-from-the-shadows sort looking for another character to support. I hope that's solid enough going forward. Tsukuda “Kara” Karasu was born in Larendre, but remembers next to nothing of it. In her youth, her parents brought her on a trip to Threshold - a mission of diplomacy or trading as she remembers, but her parents were killed. Whether it was a deliberate assasination or mugging carried too far is unclear, but authorities never did find anyone r