So far…

I’ll start off by saying that even though I thought I was going to be quitting playing video games on the PC (at the least) and start working on other things, I have not done so and so this post is just an update on what the hell I’ve been up to, vidya-related wise

Desktop upgrades

The desktop computer is in need of an upgrade that can be argued to be more worthwhile than what is current. When I put this system together, I figured that the most intense application would be video games. Since then, I’ve explored video editing and encoding to be the most intense application that I can do and, going even a bit more beyond that, video compositing and encoding.

Becuase of this, I’ll be needing some serious upgrades that will begin with the CPU, motherboard, and RAM quanitites and speeds.

I. CPU

Intel is coming out in 2018 with Coffe-Lake. Assuming that things in the economy won’t be going haywire to the point where desktop upgrade plans are going to have to be altered significantly to where the chances of getting a LGA 2066 CPU and motherboard will have to be curtailed, Coffe-Lake is what I’m going for now for one reason: it gives me time to save money. What is said to be true is that the likelyhood of a six-core 4.x Ghz CPU of this top-tier grade of CPUs is very high now that some newer chips - not Coffee-Lake - are coming in the mainstream line of Intel chips that are four cores and clock about 4.0 Ghz stock.

So I’m hoping to spend, hopefully, around $600 USD.

II. Motherboard

ASUS seems to have continued its “WS” workstation motherboard series and will be doing so in the near future. The only thing I have to look out for is for the motherboard to feature an m.2 2887 (NVME) compatible slot for me to then insert a 512 GB or 1TB m.2 SSD from which to boot Windows 10 off from.

III. m.2 SSD (2887)

This was not planned ahead and I’m thankful for a contact turning my attention to the consideration of using this kind of SSD as a storage device to boot off from as it provides for a very fast computing experience overall. Coupled with Windows 10, and it’ll be the fastest experience ever from what most tell me that run off their m.2 their copies of Windows 10.

IV. DDR4 RAM

This is something I might want to brush up again on in terms of where CAS numbers are averaging. CAS figures at this point in time are so high but are no longer really necessary to pay attention to since higher frequency rates are not easily achieveable and no current set of CAS average numbers can deter overall performances as they did in DDR2 DIMMs to where CAS numbers had to be taken into account along with frequency averages. Assuming that ASUS has a high-end LGA 2066 motherboard that supports up to, or more than, 128GB, I guess I’ll start with a 64GB kit (dual-kit DIMM pack).

And that’s about it so far. Sure there’s the video card and the only thing I’m seriously considering to get is none other than a Nvidia Titan model card of some kind if they’re still around, otherwise a xx70, xx80 model of whatever series of GTX that will be current by the time I start buying parts for the desktop upgrade happen. But otherwise, I’m happy with what I have thus far. As for storage expansion, I think it’ll be 2TB SSDs that will be coming in to replace the 2TB HDD that are now being used. The current HDDs might be replaced by larger 4 or 6TB HDDs. But again, these are not concerns right now immediate, just the aforementioned are.

Witcher 3

I’ll try not to spoil the game too much as I’m in the middle of the game (how far in I can’t say but at this point I’ve managed to have on record of around one-hundred and fifty-seven hours):

The game is a very long one that requires lots of patience and time to look at everything as there is a lot of content in this game to a point where I’m even considering that it’s going to take probably six months to a possible, almost, whole year to finish. And forget about New Game Plus because that game might end up being even harder on “Death March” difficulty. But all the same, the game is wonderful and if you have not played Witcher 1 and 2, you should right now. The Witcher series is the only RPG franchise I can recommend to someone that normally would never consider playing fantasy rpg video games - let alone video games taking place in a fantasy backdrop.

Several things I’ve noticed about Witcher 3 that I think would interest anyone:

  1. The stories of the side quest are not one-offs: You finish them, sure, but then they continue off on a story plot of their own, your initial small arc that renders the side-quest as “finished” leads to another side-quest that has a backdrop story that follows through with what happens afterward somewhere down the line

  2. When it comes to romance, you pick one or nothing. So far I’m playing this time around not wanting neither of the two choices (Triss or Yennifer) of which Geralt, the protagonist, can go steady with.

  3. Witcher gear hunting sucks and if you level up too fast due to having a monster trophy that allows for extra experience point gains, then get ready to spend, spend, spend on having a witcher set to level up to just even so much as to have something worthy of your current leveling rate - which is prohibitively expensive.

  4. Loot, save, sell, repeat and don’t spend too much. That’s the formula for financial success of which you don’t need a stupid course from Trump University to figure out to get around this game’s economy. Of course the pain is that you have to sell the right items to the right vendor. Otherwise you’ll get shafted with byback prices by vendors that don’t specialize in whatever item you’re selling that particular cheating(?) vendor back to.

Note: Due to changing main boot drives from that of a HDD to a SSD, I’ve had to stop playing Witcher 3. Currently I’m playing Nier: Automata, of which I’ll make a brief review post on later. But once I get the desktop computer upgraded, I’ll resume my current game.

Doom Mod work

I’m currently doing research on Doom mods, mapping tools (of past and present), and checking out the Doom Wiki a lot to figure out a project that I will hope will lead to be the biggest megawad to have ever been passed around and be played in Doom map mod history.

I have yet to check out one particular map megawad in mind, Return to Saturn X, now from what I understand this megawad is huge: large quantites of well made maps that are each very large and with lots of content to go through.

Currently I’m still playing Brutal Doom (version 20) via the Brutal Doom Starter Pack of which I’d like to learn more and more on map geometry and enemy placement.

But for the meantime, I’m building up some referential resources to later come back to as I work on my own projects that I’d like to have someone else, maybe a team, to work with to then release. I’ll post more later on about what I have exactly in mind, starting with a Doom mod listing of sorts.

So far that’s about it really. I have many things to do and so little time. Also, I think I’ll start making Bianca Beauchamp my blog’s unofficial “mascot” because, “Tex n’ bewbs”.