What are you playing?

[FoulOnWhite]

Well zelda-Echoes of wisdom is officially out tomorrow. I've been playing it a few days already and it's pretty great, any one else going to play it? Some interesting puzzles in it so looking forward to some other input.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I remember Crysis as being infamously thread limited, not core limited, and I do recall the E8x00 Duos outperforming the Quads due to clock speed disadvantage. I know my E8400/E8600 ran the games very, very well.

While you have a point, remember the E8400/E8600 did not come out until mid 2008ish. In 2007, the higher the resolution the more the OS needed to do in the background to help the game run, thus for 1366x768 screen(or higher), a Q6600 2.4ghz edged out a dual E6700 and the 2.66ghz Q6700 Quad easily outperformed at the same speed. Thus why Crysis was a quad core seller for most of that year and into 2008. We need to remember, back then CPU core were few and were at a premium and the OS still needed resources to run in the background.

Well zelda-Echoes of wisdom is officially out tomorrow.

Looks good too!

I've been playing it a few days already and it's pretty great

Demo?

 

[Princess Garnet]

Not to be pedantic, but the E8400 was very early 2008, being in January (the only reason I remember is because I bought one on release as that was when I finished my first PC). E8500/E8600 were later though, around when you said, yeah.

But yeah, I don't want to detract the thread too far off topic, but I thought I remembered Crysis being more thread limited and not quite taking full advantage of dual cores as it was, let alone quad cores, so your comment surprised me a bit. Around the time Crysis began development, CPUs would have only started gaining cores, and the writing wasn't yet entirely on the wall that single core speed scaling would soon slow, so it was likely developed like older games where they thought that future, faster CPUs would partly take care of the game's demands, and that... never quite happened. If I'm not misremembering (it's been years and years since I messed with configuring settings files for the game), it was more seen with the "very high" settings (or manually increasing draw distance in particular, I think) that really asks a lot of the CPU, and that isn't helped with extra cores. Even relatively recent-ish CPUs can have frame drops below 60 FPS due to lack of single core speed in that game if settings/draw distance is high enough. There was some stuff that was split to different threads (like AI) but otherwise I recall it specifically being single thread limited. Even the remaster has much of the same issue I think.

Crysis 2 and 3 (being developed on CryEngine 3 instead of CryEngine 2, and being more multi-platform developed with the multi-core consoles partly in mind) were a bit more multi-threaded I think. Perhaps you're thinking of either of those?

A higher resolution in the game should only increase GPU needs, not CPU core count needs? So that part confuses me (although something like the then-new 16:10's wider FOV would need a bit more CPU than a 4:3 FOV, but again that would mainly need more single core speed). More cores would help with background tasks, yeah, and I can imagine a shop wanting to use the latest games/multi-tasking scenarios as ideas to want to upsell people in general (not shaming with this statement, just proposing it as a hypothetical possibility as to why you may remember that experience from that situation?).

But yeah, regardless... it was a fun and pretty game so now I'm kind of sad it isn't working for me at the moment but I'm also not looking to play it right now. If I ever want to play it again, I'll look into workarounds.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

While you have a point, remember the E8400/E8600 did not come out until mid 2008ish. In 2007, the higher the resolution the more the OS needed to do in the background to help the game run, thus for 1366x768 screen(or higher), a Q6600 2.4ghz edged out a dual E6700 and the 2.66ghz Q6700 Quad easily outperformed at the same speed. Thus why Crysis was a quad core seller for most of that year and into 2008. We need to remember, back then CPU core were few and were at a premium and the OS still needed resources to run in the background.


Looks good too!

Demo?

Demo.....yeah ok a "demo"

It is so good though I will definitely buy it. If you have a switch and like the Zelda games this is a must have. Apparently it is 8 times the size of links awakening.

 

[Splinterdog]

Not to be pedantic, but the E8400 was very early 2008, being in January (the only reason I remember is because I bought one on release as that was when I finished my first PC). E8500/E8600 were later though, around when you said, yeah.

But yeah, I don't want to detract the thread too far off topic, but I thought I remembered Crysis being more thread limited and not quite taking full advantage of dual cores as it was, let alone quad cores, so your comment surprised me a bit. Around the time Crysis began development, CPUs would have only started gaining cores, and the writing wasn't yet entirely on the wall that single core speed scaling would soon slow, so it was likely developed like older games where they thought that future, faster CPUs would partly take care of the game's demands, and that... never quite happened. If I'm not misremembering (it's been years and years since I messed with configuring settings files for the game), it was more seen with the "very high" settings (or manually increasing draw distance in particular, I think) that really asks a lot of the CPU, and that isn't helped with extra cores. Even relatively recent-ish CPUs can have frame drops below 60 FPS due to lack of single core speed in that game if settings/draw distance is high enough. There was some stuff that was split to different threads (like AI) but otherwise I recall it specifically being single thread limited. Even the remaster has much of the same issue I think.

Crysis 2 and 3 (being developed on CryEngine 3 instead of CryEngine 2, and being more multi-platform developed with the multi-core consoles partly in mind) were a bit more multi-threaded I think. Perhaps you're thinking of either of those?

A higher resolution in the game should only increase GPU needs, not CPU core count needs? So that part confuses me (although something like the then-new 16:10's wider FOV would need a bit more CPU than a 4:3 FOV, but again that would mainly need more single core speed). More cores would help with background tasks, yeah, and I can imagine a shop wanting to use the latest games/multi-tasking scenarios as ideas to want to upsell people in general (not shaming with this statement, just proposing it as a hypothetical possibility as to why you may remember that experience from that situation?).

But yeah, regardless... it was a fun and pretty game so now I'm kind of sad it isn't working for me at the moment but I'm also not looking to play it right now. If I ever want to play it again, I'll look into workarounds.

Speaking of Crysis Remastered, my biggest criticism is that the save system was changed to checkpoints (with no cloud syncing on Steam) only, which of course, is the trend today. Give me manual saves any day, please.
Also, it has a bug where you regroup with Prophet next to the river, then enter a cave and it's supposed to load the next level. It doesn't, and crashes to the desktop. I've tried this on two machines with the same result, but will continue to investigate.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

Speaking of Crysis Remastered, my biggest criticism is that the save system was changed to checkpoints (with no cloud syncing on Steam) only, which of course, is the trend today. Give me manual saves any day, please.
Also, it has a bug where you regroup with Prophet next to the river, then enter a cave and it's supposed to load the next level. It doesn't, and crashes to the desktop. I've tried this on two machines with the same result, but will continue to investigate.

enable quick save

1. Download the mod from here: A bad Quicksave mod at Crysis Remastered Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)
2. Navigate to CrysisRemastered\Game, this is the folder where you installed the game.
3. Backup the file called gamedata.pak
4. Replace gamdata.pak with the one from the download link

 

[lexluthermiester]

Not to be pedantic, but the E8400 was very early 2008, being in January (the only reason I remember is because I bought one on release as that was when I finished my first PC). E8500/E8600 were later though, around when you said, yeah.

Released, yes. Available to the general consumer market? No. We didn't get the first E8400s or E8500s until May 2008. I remember this clearly because we were hoping mad about it. OEM system builders were getting their stocks but the smaller store chains and general consumers were being left in the cold. General upgrades didn't happen that year until the middle of the year. The E8600 didn't come around until the end of that same year. So yeah, for nearly 14months straight, Crysis was our Core2Quad seller. And it was an easy sell if the customer could afford the upgrade.

 

[Splinterdog]

Far Cry (2004) still looks great today on GOG. and it's not as easy as it looks. There's also a mod for adding quick save and load.

 

[Vayra86]

Well... it took one evening to break the ice on Frostpunk 2. That wasn't hard. But fun nonetheless... time for higher difficulties.

Utopia mode, 50k pop ambition reached. Look at dat surplus... and I've got 89 frostland teams idling too

 

[Frick]

Terra Invicta is on sale, so I got it, again, maybe I won't refund it this time. I'm interested because it has been described as basically Aurora but with a budget, which says something about the game. You see if you go in blind you wouldn't even know there would be space ships involved, or even armies.

 

[Princess Garnet]

Released, yes. Available to the general consumer market? No. We didn't get the first E8400s or E8500s until May 2008.

I must have lucked out. I'm almost certain I purchased my E8400 in January of 2008 from Newegg. I even want to go so far as to say I got it the first day it released, because to this day, I think that's the only part I ever got on first day of availability (I missed the first availability of the 7800 XT and had to for restock nearly a week later, otherwise that would be another). Unfortunately, my order history only goes back to 2014 so I can't verify that with proof, but I'm almost 100% positive on that. The reason I am is because I built my first PC over the span of a few months, and I started it very late 2007 (with the plan of getting the then-upcoming E8400) and if it didn't come until May, that would have meant I was waiting over half a year to finish it and I know for a fact it didn't take me that long. It was more like 3 or 4 months or so. The last thing I got was the video card.

Anyway, so that this isn't completely off topic, I have been replaying the classic Final Fantasy titles and just finished Final Fantasy V.

Spoiler

RIP Galuf! While Final Fantasy IV is probably the "better" game between the two, one thing I absolutely disliked about it was not committing to its deaths! Like, seriously, Cid especially!? What was that!? Final Fantasy V commits to its deaths. And this one is fun for the job system, of course.

I forgot how hard some of the optional bosses were in this one. I defeated Shinryu with almost no trouble but Omega is uh... something else. I know I defeated it years and years ago but I gave up on it for now (obviously I could just mimic the instructions of a walthrough but where is the fun in that?).

Onto the legendary Final Fantasy VI.

 

[Prime2515102]

The entire Borderlands series (currently on 2).

I've only played the first one before but gave up half-way through because it seemed never ending at the time. lol Luckily they were all free from giveaways.

 

[Princess Garnet]

You mean FFV(5)? FFVI(6) didn't have Bartz, Lenna, Faris, Krile and ExDeath. Just saying..

I mean I had finished Final Fantasy V, which is what the screenshot was (final boss), so now I'm moving onto VI.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I mean I had finished Final Fantasy V, which is what the screenshot was (final boss), so now I'm moving onto VI.

Sorry I misread that.

 

[Vayra86]

So, Frostpunk 2 is proper hard after all, even one difficulty up... failed 2 times yesterday on Officer. Now it seems to be under control. Seems. There's a lot of efficiency to be found in the tech trees and with good combinations of laws. Basically the moment I find myself struggling for resources and then for the heatstamps and workforce to actually get to them, its likely game over. Things will just cascade into failure. Nice!

One big thing I learned is the immense use of resource hubs. The workforce cut they provide is great, and vast storage capacity is great too, lots of stuff just won't come to you in a steady resource flow.

 

[Darkholm]

Finished God Of War Ragnarok.
Now sorry that I avoided all spoilers, wiki plots and YT videos because wanted to see the end myself. And boy am I a moron. This is one of the most disappointing sequels ever that I played. Enjoyed GOW every second of it 2 1/2 years ago when ported to PC, but this...

Question: grabbed Callisto Protocol the other day on Epic for free. To start it or let it sit ?

 

[JWNoctis]

Book of Hours, HOUSE OF LIGHT expansion. The finest librarian simulator has been expanded upon with more late-game content, food, fun, flair, and occult myth. There is supposed to be another one in the works.

The stuff - including the foodstuff - looked interesting, but it's late game content I've yet to get to. Infestation and contamination felt rather a lot more common than it was a few versions ago - a full 1/5 of the first few room's books are infested. Players are strongly advised to get into a roleplaying mindset, and write down which action and which books gave which memories and/or items, and what aspects those had for smoother progression, like a real librarian would do.

And....Yep, Frostpunk 2 is hard(er than Frostpunk 1 on sandbox and minimum difficulty). You can take it somewhat easy in Frostpunk 1 and play it like a sandbox builder, but starting and early-level techs without laws in 2 are not even close to self-sufficient on all terms, and it is a race against time and dwindling stock from the start, even on minimum difficulty. Think I might be getting a bit old for this.

 

[DR4G00N]

Started playing a bit of Genshin Impact for something to do after 'finishing"/ran out of things to do in Star Rail.
Seems pretty alright so far. Of course it shares many of the same core mechanics as Star Rail so it was easy to jump into. Though I'm still trying to figure out which characters work well together.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Started playing a bit of Genshin Impact for something to do after 'finishing"/ran out of things to do in Star Rail.
Seems pretty alright so far. Of course it shares many of the same core mechanics as Star Rail so it was easy to jump into. Though I'm still trying to figure out which characters work well together.


View attachment 365259

Honkai Star Rail? That is turn-based though. Genshin is realtime action.

 

[nomdeplume]

Hunter COTW got a recent update. Better optimization, better graphical quality, better across the board gameplay and menus. Oh, and a DLC with much better scopes but sadly no update to binoculars.

 

[DR4G00N]

Honkai Star Rail? That turn-based though. Genshin is realtime action.

Maybe "mechanics" was the wrong word to use, I meant more in general, obviously the gameplay/combat is different but many things outside of that work in a similar or the same way.

 

[Space Lynx]

Hunter COTW got a recent update. Better optimization, better graphical quality, better across the board gameplay and menus. Oh, and a DLC with much better scopes but sadly no update to binoculars.

View attachment 365266

This looks like Thomas Kincaide and Bob Ross had a painting baby, and yes that is a good thing, but also yes a weird comment. I'm ok with it though.

 

[Apocalypsee]

Red Alert 2. This is the 'speedrun' tactics that people do in Pearl Harbor mission. There is a lone sentry gun in one of the island before the Soviets completely destroyed the ally base, destroy this sentry gun before they can build on the destroyed base to quickly end the mission (game will detect as win when all building is destroyed). I don't like speedrunning but I only just now tested this, it's quite satisfying. I dunno why this game is harder than I remember it was, enemy rush to kill quickly and from all sides (sea, ground and paradrop), I didn't remember this before. I only play on medium difficulty.

 

[Veseleil]

Started playing a bit of Genshin Impact for something to do after 'finishing"/ran out of things to do in Star Rail.
Seems pretty alright so far. Of course it shares many of the same core mechanics as Star Rail so it was easy to jump into. Though I'm still trying to figure out which characters work well together.


View attachment 365259

You just made me download this game after maybe 5 years or even more. I forgot how pretty and artistically consistent its setting is. The reason I stopped playing is mostly the gatcha rolls, apart from having a good amount of higher tier characters pulls, the weapon pulls were a total bummer.

My go to quad were 2 electro and 2 fire chars. Although I've already forgot which ones...
Oh well, I guess there's a lot of free pulls and quests awaiting for me there. The game is much more fun in co-op, especially when you're under-powered. I met some really nice people there. Killing bosses is sometimes a chore to get done all by yourself.

 

[BlaezaLite]

Riders Republic. Being a BMXer for nearly 40 years, this game has my attention. At least it will until Forza Insiders launches in 2 weeks.

Lots of fun if you like flying with a wingsuit or skateboarding and so on. Being a Ubisoft title, it has some bugs in, but when you land from an X-Up and your arms suddenly become tangled, I laughed because it was funny, not game breaking.