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I picked up Train Life for less than £6 on GOG. It’s a mix of train driving and management. Looks interesting (especially to somebody like me who doesn’t have the room for a big train set)

Gone through the tutorial. Not too intense driving so maybe just what I’m looking for:)
 
I stumbled upon a game called Ballistic NG on Steam for £8. It's a racing game where you fly a dart-shaped hovership around futuristic tracks, while 90s-style techno plays. In other words, it's Wipeout. It's extremely fast and the spaceships are hard to control. but it's really cool and captures the feel of the original while looking much better. People who like this sort thing (which I am) will find this to be the sort of thing that they like (which I do). Just turn on all the driving assists.
 
Slightly miffed that there was a bug it took me a while to notice in my previous Stellaris game (started a new one). Aided by helpful hyperlane geography, I did well, securing strategic sites and using a nearby ally to crush a neighbour who might have been a problem. Then I took advantage of a long war between other civilisations to grab a couple of vassals.

Then I realised their war had been going on for way too long. There's meant to be a war exhaustion mechanic to prevent things going on forever, but that was evidently broken, and it was giving me a huge unfair advantage. Shame, as I'd been doing rather well.
 
Has anyone else tried the Lossless Scaling utility that's available on Steam? It lets you use either upscaling or frame generation (or both) in any game. I've been using the frame generation with Skyrim for the last day or two and it completely irons out those fps drops I mentioned up-thread.

I locked the game to 40 fps, which is the stable rate I can get in all areas with some of the mods I'm using, and then frame generation kicks it back up to a locked 60, even in Falkreath, which is notoriously heavy on fps, especially with tree mods. It's also allowed me to add trees to Whiterun, which I tried before but found too heavy on performance. The view from the bridge looking back at Riverwood now also stays locked at 60, where it used to drop into the 40s. I could go higher, but the mod that unlocks the Bethesda frame cap is a little beyond my comfort zone at the moment.

I also tried Midnights Suns, which I'd had to lower some settings on, and it's now running locked at 60 fps with everything set to Epic. I must try Cyberpunk at some point.

Currently the utility is under £4.71 in the sale - better than buying an RTX 4090 :LOL:

Save 20% on Lossless Scaling on Steam

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I've been playing more of Ballistic NG, aka Wipeout for the PC. It's a very difficult game, and I wish that there was some way of lowering the settings to a point where I could do it reasonably well, but I'm not complaining. What matters is that it feels fair. It is what it is, and part of that is that it's hard. It's also very well made and does everything that Wipeout used to do, except better. Definitely recommended.
 
I've been enjoying a bit of Spacehaven although I didn't realise when I bought it that it was still in early access. That probably explains why one of my crew members absolutely refuses to remove his space suit under any circumstance (he even goes to the toilet and sleeps in it).

Must be a bug.

Either that or I've created a character with a rather strange fetish. :unsure:
 
Yeah, if I ever start over again I must choose something other than a stealthy archer :LOL:
 
To be fair, stealth archer is a lot of fun.
 
Today in Skyrim:

After exploring a cave, which turned out to be full of spiders and vampires, I returned to the city to sell my loot to the seedy man in the "general goods" shop. On leaving the shop, some bloke started telling me about his family's lost sword. Two cultists of Cthulhu or the like then showed up and attacked me. I murdered the cultists, while the bloke continued to tell me about his family's lost sword, and stole the cultists' magic robes to flog down the "general goods" shop.

However, this left two nearly-naked dead cultists lying in the road, spoiling the view. Therefore I dragged the bodies behind a nearby cottage, at which point a guard showed up and warned me that I'd better not be up to anything. I do wonder if Skyrim has a rather dry sense of humour.
 
Dry? It's positively parched. The number of times I've been told I smell like a wet dog . . . :cautious::LOL:

As far as modding is concerned, I think I've reached a tipping point. At this stage, any changes I make to the environment or architecture will probably mess it up. There might be some smaller cosmetic mods I add, but I'm going to leave the bigger things as they are now. I changed all the grass at the weekend, which was the last aspect I really wanted to sort out. The only thing I haven't done is create grass LODs. Well, I did do it a couple of weeks ago but it didn't look great for some reason, so I removed them. It took over two hours to do, so I can't be bothered to go through that again and not be happy with it, again.

Here's how it's looking now:

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As far as gameplay goes, I haven't modded it much at all. I've added one called True Directional Movement, which unlocks the camera so you can control it independently of movement and also adds a target lock-on function, and one called Precision which makes weapon attacks more, well, precise. There are some combat overhauls that make it more like a Souls-like, but I'd just go and play Elden Ring if I wanted that.

And this is the look you get if you say my character smells like a wet dog :LOL:

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I'm still on Jedi Survivor. I feel like I've been playing for ages and hardly actually achieved much of anything. The actual story moments seem to happen at the end of a long slog of running, jumping, climbing, swinging, and a little puzzling, while killing every kind of fauna except the two types you can ride and the one you can pat. I've only been to two worlds, the first one (I want to say Koboh) and Jedha, plus a diversion to the first one's moon. Oh, and Coruscant, but I can't go back there.

I remember having more fun with Fallen Order, but was it just like this? I at least recall more diversity of locations...
 
I'm beginning to think that General Goods Shop Man is the true hero of Skyrim: while the countryside is awash with heroes and bandits shouting about honour and swords (the "w" in "swords" is pronounced), he is keeping the economy going with his willingness to trade in absolutely anything. Thanks to him, Skyrim is moving from an economy based on shouting at rocks to a fiscal powerhouse fuelled by sweetrolls, garnets and bits of mammoth.

Incidentally, there seem to be very few voice actors in Skyrim, or the other Bethesda games I've played. General Goods Man is one of about thirty voices done (well) by the same bloke, who was Nick Valentine in Fallout 4 and even the lead character in Thief, 24 years ago. Likewise most of the women seem to be played by one of two actresses, one of whom sounds very Scandinavian. Presumably it's cheaper that way.
 
If Belethor had a sister, I'd buy her :LOL:

I'm starting to realise that Barbas is the best follower in the game. Holds the aggro of everything in sight and is virtually indestructible, so the perfect tank.

I just wish he'd stop barking when I'm trying to be stealthy :LOL:
 
I've fought the Skyrim civil war in favor of the Imperium and the Stormcloaks multiple times. I've killed Parthunax. I've killed every single vampire in existence. I've hacked every person, monster, and creature in Skyrim over and over again.... but I've recently began my first archer. Stealth archery is over powered.
 

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