The Mind Of OverlordTomala
Are you fucking serious? / Technology

XBox Fitness goes the way of the Zune dodo

It seems like the only real consistent thing about Microsoft is their ability to shut down games and programs that people use. This time XBox Fitness is the next target.

“Given the service relies on providing you with new and exciting content regularly, Microsoft has given much consideration to the reality of updating the service regularly in order to sustain it,” Microsoft’s Erica Bell wrote in the announcement. “Therefore, the decision has been made to scale back our support for Xbox Fitness over the next year… While our team is saddened by this news, we couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve accomplished in the past two and a half years.”

I don’t know why people continue to support a company that has this sort of a track record, other than blind fanboyism and people who don’t know shit from shinola about Microsoft’s history. But as long as they continue to support such a flake of a company it’ll keep happening and happening.

Gaming

I’ve gone Elswyer

I’ve finally made my way to Elswyer, the version included in the Legacy Of The Dragonborn mod. The voice work has been kinda hit and miss but I’ve been enjoying the tropical sights and the story in general.

72850_20160628182217_1
Fighting the Thalmor, who clashed with my airship above the Elswyer province.

So far I don’t have many complaints about it. Other than maybe the lighting, and as I’ve said above the voice work. The voice acting itself sounds great, but the microphone quality for some of the NPC’s just didn’t mesh well. If it were more crisp I would have found it more believable.

All in an Overlord's day / Work

Now that I’ve slept for a couple of days, here’s a post

Took a couple days off from writing, on Saturday I was pretty rekt from work. We had a big load of TV’s and printers which equaled a lot of arm and leg work. It also didn’t help that I was sleep deprived too. One of the few downsides to this job is the early to bed early to rise thing, and with summer in full swing you can sometimes hear a lot of partying noise. It’ll be about another month before I partake in that sort of thing, put in for vacation woop woop!

Tested out my new bike that day too. Real nice. It’s a Schwinn 700c series, hybrid city/mountain bike. Got it for $260 with shipping. 😀 I’ve been looking around on Amazon for things to pimp it out with, like lights and maybe an mp3 player. Might even get some saddle bags and have them modified to fit on the back. There’s a nice spot behind the seat for putting whatever you want. Would be nice to go out whenever and pick up my own groceries or some other swag.

Gaming

Steam Summer Sale Open Thread

Gabe

I’ve already managed to pick up quite a few games from my wishlist, once again assuring that I will never ever be bored with my extreme library.

I will say though that this year the Steam Sale doesn’t seem as interesting as the previous ones. Hell, last year it felt like Valve started running out of ideas with the monster clicker game. I can tell Valve’s main focus is on VR at the moment.

I haven’t actually played any of my new games yet. Instead I decided to take a break from Skyrim to check out Trine. It’s actually quite enjoyable! It’s a side scroller with physics puzzles. You can switch between being a wizard, a thief or a knight to get over obstacles. Plus all the Trine games have Steam workshop, so when you finally finish the game (or get frustrated on one of the levels in the main game) you can test your brain on other peoples work. It’s also a 3 player game, local co-op or over the internet. Will probably drag my brother onto the couch sometime so we can play with our controllers. Which the game is really friendly with as well as with a keyboard and mouse.

News

RIP Duckduckgo

Yahoo and Duckduckgo have partnered together.

Our partnership with Yahoo helps us give you the best search experience possible.

Of course, in accordance with our strict privacy policy, we do not share personal information with any partners, including Yahoo. To make this crystal clear, Yahoo has also published a privacy statement to the same effect. We’re proud to work closely with a partner who is willing to work with us to protect your privacy.

In addition to the existing Yahoo technology we had been using, our latest partnership with Yahoo enables DuckDuckGo to get access to features you’ve been requesting for years:

Date filters let you filter results from the last day, week and month.
Site links help you quickly get to subsections of sites.

All of this functionality is not fully rolled out yet, but will be soon!

I’m hoping Yahoo ruin them, like they did with Altavista. They were nice until Yahoo came along with the same guidelines and it slowly turned to shit. I hope this isn’t another repeat, but I’m not too confident. Duckduckgo became my favorite search engine after Yahoo put the final nail in Altavista’s coffin, time to look at other search engines just in case.

Gaming

Have some epic Skyrim pix

Guess what I’ve been up to?

72850_20160621213442_1

72850_20160621104258_1

72850_20160621102109_1

Yep, always something interesting going on in this game.

I really need to get to Solitude at some point. I have lots and lots of swag for the Dragonborn Museum sitting in my ever expanding cybernetic backpack that I don’t need to keep hauling around, but I’m closer to Windhelm. I could cheat my way there but I’d rather wander around. And with this game there is no shortage of wandering. 😛

Gaming / Uncategorized

Sunday Skyrim Thread

My current game has been going quite well. I’ve crafted a katana with electrical damage and soul trapping:

72850_20160619142610_1

This time around I’m mostly relying on materials I find within the game rather than spawning them in the console (with a few exceptions such as my playermodel/armor and anything that doesn’t have a place in the game). I’ve even been crafting the scarves and halos from scratch.

72850_20160615195444_1

Fun fact: To make that scarf I had to use a white scarf and red mountain flowers. Some of the ingredients to put scarves together are rather… unique. Like using butterfly wings and metals to get the desired colours. Fortunately I have a lot of stuff in my inventory with room to spare… Which to be fair I did increase with the console, but that’s kind of part of my character’s story. I can carry a ton o swag.

Gaming

Microsoft is fascinated by that Steam thing

Microsoft’s attempt to get people into their Applesque walled garden hasn’t exactly worked as well as they planned. So Spenser saying this would only make sense:

“I look at Steam today, it’s on an incredible growth trajectory,”

Yeah, and you guys don’t own it in any way, shape or form. Bet you guys are really kicking yourselves in the ass over that.

“It’s a massive force in gaming; a positive force. I think it will be bigger a year from now than it is today. And five years later it will still be bigger again. I look at Valve as an important [independent software vendor] for us on Windows. They are a critical part of gaming’s success on Windows. I don’t think Valve’s hurt by not having our first-party games in their store right now. They’re doing incredibly well. We will ship games on Steam again.”

Translation: You guys totally hate GFWL 2.0, so we’re going to get you guys to buy our products on Steam.

Nevertheless I an intrigued, how is Microsoft going to go about this? And what MS requirements will they hook into a Steam version of whatever the hell it is they want to sell? After all Ubi and some Origin games call for accounts, nothing is stopping Microsoft…