The Mind Of OverlordTomala
Gaming

Process of emulation: Getting everything dialed into Steam

Not what you usually see when you launch a game on Steam…

My pursuit to turn my computer into the ultimate console has been going quite nicely. I’ve been adding each emulated game individually to Steam so I can launch them in Big Picture without having to manually select each game. I’ve also been setting up my Steam Controller to work with the emulators, from what I’ve read people really like the Steam Controller with emulators like Dolphin (Wii and Gamecube) and a bunch of others thanks to the extra buttons. Spyro works really well with it, the grips on the bottom of the controller are set to rotate the camera view as opposed to the left and right triggers. It makes the games feel more comfortable IMO.

So far I’ve only setup Spyro and Klonoa (the PSX and Wii versions) and plan to add more as I come across them. At some point I’ll have to copy off my old Playstation discs onto the drive, or turn them into ISO’s. Would be nice to play some Crash Bandicoot and a couple others. Once I have this setup I’ll do the same on my laptop. That should REALLY catch some people off guard when I take my lunch breaks. 😛 I’ve already been enjoying quite a bit of Super Mario.

All in an Overlord's day / Food/Drink

Yesterday was therapeutic

Yesterday was nice. I had a short work day, came home and made some cherry blossom green tea with a plan to clean bedding. While doing that I decided to cook up a homemade bowl of miso ramen using dashi granules and the white miso paste I got the other day. Firstly, I used granules (which some would consider a sin) because I didn’t want to make an entire thing of soup stock, it’s ok in a pinch but I think it tastes better when prepared from scratch. Then I threw in some mirin, sake, soy sauce, the miso paste, wakame and baby portabella mushrooms. I didn’t think to take a picture but it turned out really nice, served it in a large ramen bowl and everything.

I also prepped dinner yesterday. I read about a brilliant idea to marinade steak in Chinese black bean sauce, so I started marinading early in the day so it would have a nice taste later at night. I also sliced up three colors of bell pepper, a small onion and threw in the remaining of the morning mushrooms. That all tasted good with the jasmine rice.

I’m surprised, the bean sauce gave the steak a nice dark flavor. Then I finished off the meal and had some sake before retiring to nice clean sheets. Definitely started off my weekend much nicer than last week. It was also kind of the sun to show up, I almost forgot what it looked like. 😛 I was gently woken by it today. Finally nice to have some weather during the day that isn’t completely freezing.

Gaming

Nostalgic Feels in gaming and stomach churning

Motion sickness isn’t something I’ve had in a long time, not even after hours of playing an FPS while knocking back lots of alcoholic drinks… I think the last time I had felt sick during a game was when I was playing the original Doom for an entire day, sometime during all the custom wads I cycled through I suddenly had to lie down and hope I wouldn’t throw up… at least until yesterday when those unfond memories of holding back the urge of throwing up surfaced, and who knew it would be while playing the original Spyro?

I never had access to the game when I was younger, the closest I could get to it was a Playstation Pizza Hut demo disc. I played the hell out of Spyro and some other demos on the disc always hoping that someday I’d get the full thing, sadly that never happened until years and years later when I started to play with emulators. I found roms for the first trilogy and thought “awesome!”, and so I began playing for quite a bit actually. Then after awhile last night my stomach started to turn. I didn’t want to stop playing because I was so close to finishing the level and finding all the gems, so I pressed onward a bit longer and called it good when I rescued one last dragon.

I was kinda bummed, the game itself is a lot of fun… but I can’t seem to play it for very long like I can with other games. I tried again a bit ago after getting the Playstation emulator to work through screen so I could take screencaps, and once again I had to stop after a short while of play… which pisses me off because I found an annoying boss battle and didn’t want to quit.

I wanted to do a livestream of this at some point, but it looks like I’ll have to shelf the idea. I feel the need to experiment though, maybe if I play this distanced away from the TV in the living room… could that solve my problem? Or would the larger TV make it worse?

All in an Overlord's day / Food/Drink6

Open Thread

Felt better today, work was short and calm. I have another short day tomorrow, will probably conjure up something for dinner tomorrow night and the next. Since Mom will be working late, and compared to everyone else in the house my dinner menu is a constant changing palate. I might start sharing pictures of what I create, tomorrow I’m thinking something simple like Mac n Cheese with sausage or tuna, and maybe something from my Shanghai cookbook for Friday. I’m pretty much the one the family goes to whenever we want anything Asian made I’ve noticed. After all my years of studying various cuisines from China, Japan, Thailand, etc I seem to have developed a taste and look for what goes in a dish, like what noodles to use for what dish, what sauce to make to go with what meat, how to make a nice miso soup stock, etc. I know I can never beat anything authentic, but it’s nice to have a good substitute for nights when you don’t feel like going out for the real thing.

All in an Overlord's day1

So I slept for about two days…

bed-2-2

Sorry for lack of absence lately, but this does make for a good story. I’m getting over a cold that started on Thursday, right? It got really bad on Saturday, so after getting off work I decided to take a nap… and I didn’t wake up until Monday. Ok ok I did get up and use the bathroom and maybe get some medicine and chicken soup, but yeah… All I did was lay about sleeping off the cold, and for the most part I do feel better. I still have a dry cough and my nose randomly flares up, but overall I feel far better than almost a week ago.

Here’s to mouthwords.

Technology

Razer’s Project Valerie looks interesting, however…

I like the concept, as someone who runs with dual screens when I’m at home, and I think it would be pretty sweet to have multiple screens for a wider view or even extra places to put chats and recording programs, but that design… The motor that deploys the extra screens will wear out eventually. If they came up with a way to connect the displays to one another as optional pieces. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about another set of failing components down the line.

Another problem I have with it is the keyboard/touchpad layout. It makes sense to me to have it in the center to make room for the numpad, why did they take it out and put the touchpad there?

Overall I say Razer has a good idea with the displays, but the implementation… I guess in due time we’ll see how it holds up.

All in an Overlord's day

Late Night Open Thread

Not much to report. Quiet work day, cold weather, pizza and Serious Sam. Yesterday wasn’t that much different. Tomorrow I have work and a hair appointment. I’ll probably nap for awhile or cover myself under blankets with hot tea and the steam controller. Oh! And scented fucking candles. I’ve been making a habit of burning more of those, they have done a good job of keeping me calm, sometimes they work a little too well though as I’ve been falling asleep without keeping track. One moment I’ll be reading at the computer and then the next minute I’ll be waking up hours later.

If more of these cold days keep piling up I may have to invest in a space heater. I’m getting sick of leaving my computer on to stay warm!

Gaming / Politics

Because when I think Russian hackers I think of Fallout 4

Vault boy after watching CNN

Teh Interwebz are abuzz about CNN using hacking footage from the Fallout series to show how Russians are hacking.

This is right up there with Russians using pictures and from games to make their cases about how evil we murican’s really are.

Well, I guess if I ever get Fallout 4 to work properly on my laptop I can use the hacking terminals and scare people in the breakroom.. Oh wait, most of the people in my area voted for Trump, they’ll probably praise my Russian American patriotism.

Gaming / Rants

Unleashing my inner samurai

The Steam Winter Sale brought forth lots of fun investments and gifts, I decided to venture into one that was gifted to me recently called Samurai Warriors 4-II. It looks promising, the art style is really beautiful and the dialogue is in Japanese, so you’ll want to use subtitles unless you’ve mastered the language. The characters themselves look pretty awesome! You even have the option of making your own to play outside of story mode:

It was bound to happen.

The gameplay looked like a lot of fun from what I’ve seen in videos. That was until I had a look at the control scheme:

Bit of a problem here… The mouse is non-existent in this game, as in it doesn’t even exist as a cursor. Pretty shitty considering other hack n slashes give you a keyboard and mouse option. Seriously, who thought these controls were a good idea? For example if you want to rotate the camera around you have to press buttons… I tried plugging in a controller, not my Steam Controller but one of my Logitechs, since this game is a port from Playstation I figured I’d try something close to its native control, but even that felt awkward. And the camera wouldn’t move with the right analog stick, fucking really? When that didn’t work I looked into Steam Controller configs. Some of them came pretty close to working out ok, but I think I’ll have to make my own from scratch.

This is a Japanese game, but for the love of Bob look at some other Japanese ports to PC for inspiration. The Devil May Cry games (excluding 3 because that was a shitty port) and Metal Gear Rising did a good job porting the game to work with both a controller or a keyboard and mouse setup. There really is no excuse for this.

I’m hoping the Steam Controller can fix this game up good with a special config. I really want to like this game, it’s pleasing to all the other senses, but play-ability thwarts appearances. The game has such positive reviews, so I’m hoping there is some sort of workaround.