Gaming

Looks good to me
But then, I might not have even thought of downloading mods to change the original appearances... I'd probably just have accepted them as they were

Tried to do a bit of painting today but it didn't go very well so I abandoned it in favour of... modding!

I downloaded those LOD textures plus some other things to reduce the obvious tiling in the distance and it didn't quite work as I'd hoped. The foreground grass looked good, the far distant ground looked good but it left an awkward bright area in between that really bugged me.



I tried several variations but none of them solved the problem so I gave in and went back to the mod site to download the big 400MB Complete Grass Overhaul to see if I could run that.

It does take another 5 frames off my fps but it does look much much better now...



...so I think I'm gonna stick with this...



It really is surprising how much you can do with a game from 2006, and it doesn't look too far off my Skyrim visuals with a similar framerate. (Hilariously the older and worse looking Morrowind still performs the worst of the three on my PC. )

So I am now ready to play properly instead of messing about with graphics and mods. Honest.

I rather like the tussocky look in the first image. And the softer colours....

That's the great thing about mods. You can make the games fit whatever preference you have.

The first one was a bit more annoying to me when moving across the landscape. As you approached the darker distant hills they'd suddenly become that paler middle ground and then gradually become darker again as they became covered with the tufted grass. The other option behaves a bit more consistently although there is still a bit of tiling in the distance.
But eventually you do have to stop making these decisions and actually play the game.

Valence wrote: But eventually you do have to stop making these decisions and actually play the game.

Aw, do we have to, really?

I had a little play with Steep last night. It was one of the Epic freebies from weeks back but I've only just seen it on GFN and it's always worth trying things out when you don't have to install.
Skiing/snowboarding isn't really my thing but I still had a bit of superficial fun crashing into trees and leaving trails of footprints in the crisp snow.

Me, I received an email trying to blackmail me (you know "we've hacked your webcam and filmed you while you watched porn" things... as if...) using my email and password from a game site I haven't used in years. I sent a message to them saying they'd probably been hacked and received one of those pre-written not at all to the point emails stating that they can't be sure my account was affected but they are in the process of sending individual emails to those who were affected. In other words, yes they knew they'd been hacked. They had some info (very similar to the email) online, but it seemed too old to be relevant. *shrugs* Guess it happens repeatedly and they use the same messages all the time.

And after playing some No Man's Sky and hardly remembering how, I'm back to playing Banished. I looked at new mods for Subnautica and Subnautica Below Zero as well, but I still want to wait until Below Zero passes the current Early Access phase...

Emails!

I just get two kinds of annoying emails at the moment. The first type are from Ubisoft repeatedly telling me that there's much more for me to do in their games. Yes, I know! Just because I haven't played them for a few days it doesn't mean I've given up on them. Stop being so needy!
The other type of annoying email is the constant demand to verify my email account via a phone, which I can't do cos I don't have a phone.
So now I can't even send emails any more, I can only receive them.

It makes me yearn for the days of those security questions with answers that I couldn't remember anyway.

You actually HAVE to verify the email via phone? Sheesh. *can't recall if I did that with all my addies*

Surely there must be some providers who let you have an email you can send stuff from? If you ever need it... Then again.... HOW DO YOU MANAGE without a phone!? (Yes, I have asked before... but still... Making doctor's appointments, telling mum she can't come visit next Saturday, and.... stuff. Loads of stuff. Or at least a little...)

I do have ye olde landline (which I also never use! ) but the email 2FA thingy works by text message on a mobile phone which I don't have.
I've tried to go into settings to switch the 2FA to another email address but it won't do it, maybe cos that isn't verified either.

So I have several email accounts that can all receive junk but can't send. It's all rather silly. Thankfully I send emails about as often as I use a phone so it's only a minor inconvenience.

Anyway, enough of emails. I'm off to Morrowind now.