The Mind Of OverlordTomala

New Years Eve Open Thread

For the last few years I’ve tried to keep a theme for the final blog post of each year; Last year I posted my best bits from my YouTube collection in 2020, which I didn’t bother doing this year due to only putting out three videos. In the last couple of years prior I blogged about games that I’ve finished during the year. Sadly I can only say DMC 5 and AMID EVIL (Both are mad awesome games btw and both very Linux compatible via Proton), and for me that isn’t enough to end the year on.

With that being said; I think it’s a safe bet to assume that in one way or another, we can all agree, that 2020 was by far a burning dumpster fire of a year, if only we could agree on more. I learned a lot from 2020, saw so many things I never thought I could see in a lifetime; you know… like a global pandemic, a toilet paper shortage in a country that makes most of its toilet paper, idiots that are so afraid of masks that they have to attack people wearing them, fucktards refusing to understand science even if it’s literally at their fucking fingertips, a coin shortage that shit stains blamed on Bill Gates and the derp state, having to endure childish insults about wearing my “communist burka” or being referred to as a toilet paper nazi, or a derp state puppet, etc… the list could go on and on all night, and that energy was better spent on another project.

May 2021 not mean 2020 won.

The Return Of Food Porn: New Camera Edition

It was a semi lazy dinner night. I marinaded shaved steak in thai sweet chili sauce and cooked it with some sliced onion, and then placing my meet between two Hawaiian sweet buns with some pepper jack (though I laid out a spread of other cheeses for other flavour palates). I contemplated making some oven fries on the side, but opted for a salad instead:

Bought a mix of salads, chopped up some tomato, sliced an English cucumber, added some mediteranian vegetables some quinoa and a homemade honey sriracha dressing. I thought these would make a good couple of test subjects for my new Canon Rebel T7i (800D), tested on the built in food setting with the stock lens. I still need to practice more with background blurring, but I can tell I’m going to have a lot more fun having full control of my shot.

All Of The Things With None Of The Time

I’ve been enjoying the calm that comes with the end of a holiday season. Little to no Karens to endure, less holiday stress, other than I’m still waiting on a couple packages. I forgot a couple of them are coming from overseas, god I hope they don’t get lost on the way here… my new camera floated from state to state for a few days on it’s second attempted shipment. I played with it a little bit today, and so far this is easily the most versatile camera I’ve ever owned. I played with some of the features today, it has tons of built in filter options, and more options for filming that may make this both my filming and shooting cam. I’ve already ordered a remote and a flash for it for uber professional selfies, and other things to gauge your eyes out at. :v

Played a little DMC5 during lunch today; I’ve been seeing how far I can run it under Linux before it crashes, and so far it performs flawlessly with the exception of pixelated background blur. If I can get to the end of it under Linux I’ll post a recommended review on Steam. It was inevitable of course, but if I can get it to run under Proton with flying colors I’d like to recommend it to any Linux users in case they ever wanted to check a look.

I’m just relaxing a bit before bed with some cherry blossom green tea, and I’ve just finished up a bit of animating. I’m almost finished animating a couple bodies in the current scene I’m working on, and I’ll begin working on animating body 3 tomorrow. I also posed another scene the other night. I don’t know how I keep doing it, but it’s almost like I keep coming up with all of these weird ideas for scenes (with the help of a friend or two of course) that I now have a couple instances where a scene is interrupting another scene. DAMN MY IMAGINATION! DAMN IT TO HELL!

About That Poll You Probably Forgot About

Judging youuuuuu……

As much as I don’t want to do this, I’ll be withdrawing my polling idea for the end of the year. While scouting out how much content I have in particular recording folders, I stumbled across a couple somethings that I’d like to pull from the backburner to the forefront. The only downside is that I won’t be able to release these until near the end of 2021, and since these videos will be holiday themed I won’t really be talking about them. I will still release the Crash Bandicoot Livestream though once that’s completed, but afterwards I’ll be going radio silent on YouTube content for awhile unless it’s a tutorial or if my kitties do something adorable, or some other hairbrained idea… I do have that new DSLR after all.

Walk Softly And Carry A Big Bow (And Don’t Forget The Arrows)

I spent the day bouncing between feeling nauseated and feeling moderately neato. I was actually contemplating a livestream tonight since it’s been forever since I’ve attempted one, but since I’m not feeling well it’s kind of hard to get into the mind set. I played Betrayer a couple times today, figured a walk in 17th century Virginia would be calming enough, even with skeletons and Spaniards wandering about trying to murder my face.

One of these days I might actually complete the game. 😛 To my credit I did at least finish three games this year (AMID EVIL, Serious Sam 4, and Devil May Cry 5… twice) and I only have over 600 to go! And people wonder why I’m never bored…

Merry Christmakwanzakuh!

I hope everyone had a peaceful day, celebratory or not. I slept in due to sleep deprivation and the sound of rain. Enjoyed some holiday tea, opened presents, and even played one of them! Also caught up on a little Yakuza, figured it would be appropriate given the in game universe is set around Christmas season. I’m still waiting for packages to arrive, a couple of them go back to November. Fortunately I’m patient, and I’m double fortunate to have patient friends.

In Other News I Did Things

I did quite a bit today… Made a breakfast shake, baked muffins, animated more of the current nightmare fuel project, and even found a proper poll plugin that passes flying colors. All in all a productive way to end my weekend.

I’ll put the poll up as its own page, or possibly integrate it into the main page somehow if it doesn’t look too intrusive, and also make a post about it after Christmas. Just like last time no account is necessary, and the limit will still remain as one IP vote per household. I’m really interested in how this turns out! No matter how big or small the participation is. :v

A Weekend Of Trying New Games

I cycled through some games today to properly decompress and get my mind off of yet another work week surviving morons, and waiting for late packages in the mail (waiting on gifts to send to people… some of them late, misdelivered and dropped off by residents on other streets, the post office is kind of fucky over here at the moment). I wanted to try some of the freebies I’ve accumulated in my library over the years, and decided to try Lego: Ninjago Movie because, why not? I tried to play it under Linux awhile ago and ran into audio issues, and I figured I’d play it under Windows to get around that issue. The good news is that the audio works! The bad news is that it crashes more than a drunken sailor. I did some reading around, and this game, despite the positive reviews, crashes galore on certain setups, and mine seems to fall into that happy little club. I’m running up to date drivers, it was a clean install of the game, and I even tried running it in both DX9 and DX11 mode. I’m going to see if I can tweak something under Proton, but so far I’m thankful this was a freebie; the amount crashes alone would have made me demand a refund.

Upon returning to the ultimate trudge that is my Steam library I took notice of Neon Boost; a parkour style platformer with an 80’s tron/synthwave aesthetic. You have to get from point A to point B by bouncing, ducking, rocket jumping and running along walls while listening to synthwave during constant movement. There was a LOT of dying. Some instructions are floating in the air, and I had to come around a few times just to figure out what I was supposed to do, or I didn’t climb onto the wall or rocket jump properly from said wall. You can check it out for yourself on Steam, it’s an eternal freebie.

I also gave Lara Croft And The Temple Of Osiris a try again (not a freebie, unfortunately), but the damned game still suffers from amnesia every time you launch the game. At least a free indie came through for me, even if it is a ballbuster.

New Memories Of A Memory Of Us

To kick off the weekend I combed my library of what feels like infinite entertainment, and decided to give an indie called A Memory Of Us. I picked it up in a charity bundle a few months back, and it seemed to be one of the more interesting ones in the bundle. It tells the tale of a young girl that loved to read all kinds of stories about robots and the like, but grew bored of these same tales and ventured off to yonder book store to find a new story to dig into. You find an old man sleeping on the other side of the desk, and through chat balloons and dream speak he tells you to venture upstairs to find stories. I had to drag a ladder to the other side of a room to find the book of plot device (not the actual name of the book), and encountered a bug preventing me from dragging the ladder with my controller. I even tried mapping my Steam Controller to behave like a keyboard, but the arrow keys didn’t seem to register on the analog stick, will need to science that out another time. This game is playable with a keyboard, but this would be a perfect candidate for relaxing on the couch or in bed (or if you play in the bathroom like select Nintendo Switch users and the gaming laptop owners before them). Getting over my peripheral hurdle I found a book and brought it to the old man, and he finds a picture contained within showing a younger him, as well as a girl that looks oddly like the young girl before him. He has a flashback to his childhood, where he first meets her after outrunning cops and hiding in a garbage can you fall/hide in.

You play as both characters, and rely on one another to solve puzzles and other obstacles; such as stealing a slingshot to shoot apples down into a basket, or using a pocket mirror the boy picks up to blind a drunkard, and who knows what else I’ll find? I’ve left off at outrunning the police… I do that a lot for some reason.

Other than the game not being controller friendly I like the rest of it, at least thus far. I’ll return to it again when I’m not feeling like I could sleep for an entire week.