I had a very productive weekend! My remaining Christmas presents that I ordered back in November/December FINALLY arrived! I pretty much have everything ready to go, but I’ll need to get a couple new shipping boxes. One is too small and the other one was claimed by our kitties. I also had some time to play a little TF2 yesterday!
It had been so long since I’ve played TF2 that I forgot what button it was to change classes (sad… I know) and I accidentally summoned Monoculus! At least I know that Admin plugin still works… It was a fun romp, we’ll have to do it again sometime. 🙂
I also wrapped up some more animation today! I’m going to work on animating one more scene tomorrow, and then I’ll finally get to progress into tweaking and smoothing all the animations I’ve done for all of these cutscenes. I might actually be able to do some SFM rendering later on in the week! Maybe I’ll finally be able to release something in a month or two. 😛
I kinda tired myself out yesterday, work was an emotional and physical drain (moreso than usual), and I just wanted to enjoy some fun times in Serious Sam 4 with Yutram. Seemed like a good way to start the weekend. Today I relaxed indoors, enjoyed a couple games. I was in a puzzle mood, picked up again on Deadfall Adventures as well as a little bit of Melissa K And The Heart Of Gold, and then I took a TF2 Halloween break.
I kicked back today with a good breakfast, a little photo work, and lots of Linux gaming. Took a bit of a break from using Proton to play some native Linux TF2 and Dusk. Apparently in Discord it reads that I’m playing hl2_linux instead of TF2, that made me chuckle a bit. The last time I played TF2 under Linux it kept giving me stack errors, nice to see they’ve fixed it.
I prepped my laptop on the Linux side for some fun lunch time shenanigans tomorrow. Since DMC5 runs so well on my Manjaro desktop setup with pure AMD hardware I want to see how well it runs on my laptop with Intel/NVidia. I did a quick test launch and it automatically detected the best settings, always a good sign! It even sees the proper refresh rate (144hz). Should make for a fun, scientific lunch break. I also installed a few Portal 2 mods in case I wanted to do somewhat actual not actual science.
I wanted to start this weekend with some silliness. Yutram and I went onto one of the Serious Sam Workshops (Fusion 2017 specifically) and decided to mix things up by playing with TF2 weapons in survival and co-op. It was fun, and in some ways really educational.
Aside from having a couple TF2 mods installed I also have a separate double jump mod, and as an added side effect I can somewhat jump infinitely around any map. It isn’t perfect; sometimes the jump button will stop working, but since there is no fall damage you can just jump back up to your heart’s content.
I mainly played with the Scout and Engineer modes. There was something about jumping around the map avoiding enemies that seemed fun to me, as well as dropping sentries in certain areas while I ate my ice cream and watched Mental’s minions die.
On April 8, 2020 Rick May, who voiced the Soldier from TF2 as well as Peppy Hare from Star Fox 64 (among other roles he’s played) passed away at the age of 79 due to COVID-19. I love each character from the TF2 series, while the game is nonsensical and might not seem like much to someone who hasn’t looked into it or played it much (if at all), there is so much lore and story than you could possibly imagine, and it is really, really ridiculous. The Soldier was the only other American character out of all 9 classes (that we know of) and easily the craziest American of the two… I mean this is taken directly form the official site:
Though he wanted desperately to fight in World War 2, the Soldier was rejected from every branch of the U.S. military. Undaunted, he bought his own ticket to Europe. After arriving and finally locating Poland, the Soldier taught himself how to load and fire a variety of weapons before embarking on a Nazi killing spree for which he was awarded several medals that he designed and made himself. His rampage ended immediately upon hearing about the end of the war in 1949.
The Soldier is actually my 4th most played class (from when I actively played TF2). I think my proudest moment using him was during one of the Halloween events. I was playing on a public server with my Dad and Bro with a bunch of random people, and the opposing team had these soldiers that liked to rocket jump in the air using the practice rocket launcher (the rockets don’t harm you or anyone else, they just make it easy to jump), then parachute back down and try to either shoot you with a shotgun or hit you with a shovel. I used my Disciplinary Action to outrun them, and Direct Hit to not only rocket jump up to the payload (Helltower) but to also shoot at anyone around me (the Direct Hit is basically a Rocket Launcher that requires the accuracy of a sniper rifle, you have to be dead on in order to get a hit which in most cases is deadly) and sending us all to hell to race for the Bombinomicon, the two soldiers on the other team were both pissed and confused that I got past them, and inevitably my team won the round.
Rest In Peace, and thank you for voicing such an amazing character. If it hadn’t been for COVID-19 he would have still been working to this day. You can argue that he was old, and that he would have probably died from something else, but that isn’t the point. Him, like many people, are dying from something that could have been better handled if we actually had a government and people that could take it seriously… but that’s for a whole other post entirely.
The worst thing I could think of happened… there was no bacon to fry this weekend. But I still had some leftover ham. I made up one scrambled egg with paprika, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper, onion, garlic powder and some parsley, with some ham and swiss on top with a little bit of deli sliced red bell pepper, and secured between two crusty slices of French Bread. Wasn’t what I had in mind for breakfast this morning, but it was actually quite good.
I was going to write something yesterday, but ended up taking a 12 hour nap by accident. I feel well rested, but a bit sore… rough work week and all that.
Also managed to do a little livestream this evening; You can watch it here, as this one is a Twitch exclusive. If I have time to do a stream tomorrow I will, probably something else tho. Gained a couple new followers tonight too and peaked at 4! It was a good night I’d say.
I got quite a bit done in SFM today! Rewarded myself by getting my ass pounded in TF2 alongside Yutram… They have definitely changed the AI a considerable amount since we used to play regularly, that and the AI behavior seems a little off, the bots are really good at detecting spys to the point that the bots don’t seem to want to go spy. Last I checked the bots were set to medium difficulty, Yutram and I are wondering if Valve decided that the cool kids deserve MLG mode bots or some shit. While we were playing we were treated to an interesting message:
In TF2 you have the option of wasting $100 or some shit on a digital ring that you can give to your friend or partner as a sign of friendly gay marriage or something, and not only do you get to personalize the message, but everyone playing the game will see it regardless of server. I’ve seen quite a few of these over the years, and it’s nice to know the tradition is still going strong. I never received one myself, and hopefully never will.
I somehow managed to survive work. Stocked up on some flonaise and bought some more tissues. I can’t tell if I’m getting better or not. I also preordered the new Wolfenstein, see how that goes. I also played a bit of TF2 this evening, after doing a little prep work for a couple future videos though nothing big yet, just the starting points. Tonight was more of a play night to make up for not much play during the weekend… that and Yutram and I owed ourselves some form of game together.
I survived another holiday work week, and celebrated by playing some Sekiro and TF2. I also decided on a whim to look into modding the Dark Souls games… my god what a bountiful harvest. Definitely adding to my leisure to do list. I can’ believe it but apparently I’ve spent over 8 hours in Sekiro.
Get Shrek’t
I’m thinking that I might take a break from it though, at least for the weekend. I got to the Madam Butterfly boss battle and died after a long fight that demanded my hands and ego take a break. I really do like the game, as hard as it is it feels good when you finally figure out how to take down the bosses. One of the mods that I have installed gives random status effects, and for some reason I managed to earn permanent regeneration that would only run out if I died. Even after respawning this regen effect would continue.
Now onto the next favorite part of my weekend…. sleep!
