T w e n t y S i d e d
Most of this last week has been spent getting games and some accessories working on the new computer. OpenRGB is able to control the Asus TF120 fans and the Peerless Assassin 120 fans, as well as the Redragon gaming mouse. I’ve still got a weird incompatibility between Polychromatic and my Linux headers that keeps me from accessing the two Razer devices. But as I can’t do anything with the keyboard and gamepad but turn the lighting on or off, and I can do that manually; it’s not really an issue. I also installed a program to adjust the digital display on the Peerless Assassin. It won’t auto-load on reboot; apparently because of an incorrect pointer in a script that *can* be corrected…but you can also just restart the service after a reboot and accomplish the same thing. I moved the connection on the mechanical hard drive, which proved what I figured out was correct: the 5th and 6th SATA connections on the motherboard were disabled because I have two NVMe’s installed. I used the #4 connection and everything worked. Once that was corrected I used KDE Partition Manager to edit the mount points of all my drives so I didn’t have to manually re-mount everything after every reboot. That worked fine on the laptop the last several months, but with an additional two drives to mount and a willingness to connect programs to various external drives, auto-mounting is extremely useful.
I have run into a bit of a problem on my World of Warcraft private server. I was able to raise my Destruction Warlock to max-level easily and quickly, but my second character seems to have run into a problem. I created an Draenei Enhancement Shaman. This is a dual-wielding class while the other two Shaman options are one-handed weapon + shield. Because of the accelerated leveling experience on this server they have implemented equipment drops and occasional system-mailed armor sets to keep your gear on-pace with your level. With my Warlock this happened just about every level-up, with mailed armor sets coming maybe four times. But now with my Shaman this only happened until about level 10. Since then I get an upgraded shield, which of course I’m not using, but nothing else. I didn’t pay much attention to this until recently, so the answer may be obvious: this specialized system only works for the other two class specialties. Or, because I’ve never equipped that shield nothing else is triggering to update. Maybe. I’ll try a few things the next time I get a shield upgrade drop and see if it breaks loose. I did put in a support request but no one has answered anything for a few days on their Discord server. Just to see what happens I am attempting an install of retail WoW via a new method. The Lutris launcher has worked well for me, but checking on Reddit you can see there are many, many complaints about the system not being upgraded frequently enough, and Lutris falling behind other options. I’m trying Faugus right now. It installed Battle.net just fine and the WoW install is downloading.
At the same time I have installed Minecraft. I have tried this game repeatedly since about 2011, maybe 2012. I’ll put it this way; I think the first time I installed it was on the computer I had *before* the one I built around 2012. If I remember correctly, this was a dual-Athlon (XP?) system on a Tyan motherboard. Very neat computer. It did *not* play Minecraft well. The next many times I tried the game my kids were playing it, and/or my spouse, or at least one time in the earlier years I found a mod that let you load in a picture that it would then build in a custom world you could load. Again, *neat* but not necessarily useful. The more detail you wanted the bigger the in-game edifice, because Minecraft has a “fixed” resolution. Newer versions are a bit more flexible in block sizing. I would have to go back and check (if that’s even possible now) but I doubt you could even recreate 256 colors. Maybe around 50? I remember a lot of dithering. This was also the era when you could visit websites dedicated to house plans for Minecraft. I think the rest of my family was really big on that for a while. They all enjoyed trying to recreate structures or devices people had figured out. This never really appealed to me, although I could appreciate the work others had done. More recently (like, in the last five years) I’ve followed Minecrafters who figured out automation routines. Kind of like Josh from “Let’s Game It Out”, if the end-goal is X, how can you obtain X in the fastest, most over-the-top way without doing any work? Other than the hours upon hours it takes to create a machine to do it for you. I also used to follow Minecraft music-block music creators, but that seems to have died off quite a bit. I mean, I’m probably still following them on YouTube but haven’t seen an update in a long time.
(Incidentally, WoW retail installed and ran just fine using the Faugus launcher. But a significant part, if not *the entire reason* is probably because I’m on a faster computer with a LOT more available space.)
I was surprised to find a fairly obscure gaming channel I follow upload a Minecraft video recently. They wanted to feature a mod I hadn’t heard of, not surprising considering I don’t really pay attention to the community at all. The Homestead mod caught my attention not just because it adds a ton of content, which is always noteworthy. In the home website’s first paragraph, they say the mod is designed to keep players engaged after the first two weeks. This seems right up my alley. The feature that most interests me is something the YouTuber who showed off the mod said was a bit of a turn-off: the quest system that guides you through the game. I suspect a lot of happy Minecrafters will find this feature useless or obstructive. As I understand it, anyway; gaining the ability to craft new items from new materials isn’t just a matter of finding the necessary materials or taking the required steps; such things are now locked behind quests. So while you may be ready to build a stone axe and chop down some trees because you have all the materials you need right where you spawned, you would now have to resolve the quest-line to the point you can access that recipe. As I said, *if* I’m understanding it correctly. I haven’t actually…played it yet. I have Minecraft installed, and the Prism launcher that supposedly makes mod management easy. (There are actually several launchers mentioned as working; more than one of which is available for Linux. Prism just popped up first.) And I have the mod installed. The process to get it working was only *slightly* more involved than the website listed. The instructions are complete and adequate for when everything works fine. They don’t mention failure modes. But the only real problem I had is that two of mods included in the mod package, a mini-map mod and a world map mod, came up as having new versions when I launched the game. But if you update them, they are no longer compatible with the mod. This may be an issue of timing, but wasn’t mentioned anywhere. Oh, and the other thing might actually be something the mod creator needs to change on the website. The instructions for installing the mod in the Prism launcher are basically “New Instance, Select ‘Curseforge,’ search for ‘Homestead’, make sure it’s on the latest version, then click ‘OK’.” BUT…there are A LOT of mods that come up when you search for “Homestead.” Thankfully the website uses an image that seems to be an official logo, so I just looked for the mod that used that image. And found the right one.
I am hoping this will be a successful experiment. I *like* Minecraft. However, I freely admit I’m more comfortable with a guided experience than a completely open world. To me a compelling open game has content *outside* of the story that can help fill out the world or replace story content when you need a break. Or even, I acknowledge, to take the place of a weak or bad story, or add-on to the end of a short one. It is a rare open world *to me* that makes a better game when the content is less obvious. But I also see that some people, maybe even most people, I don’t know; prefer that. Heck, I prefer solo content in MMORPG’s. I use FAQ’s for big solo-play games. Not as a cheat, to be clear; purely as a navigation aid. it’s not even necessary for some games. If I enjoy it, I’ll play a second time to 100% the game. I like how Tomb Raider did it, where the number of “secrets” on a level are listed at the end so you can go back and try to find them.
If anyone has thoughts on Minecraft I would love to hear them. The game has a fascinating history, and I’m talking about the use and its place in culture; not just the programming and initial publication by Notch. I think you could make the argument that Minecraft is the single most-important game published of all time.
I’ll be returning to slasher movie killers next week. That’s it for now, see you soon!
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If you like the idea of “Minecraft but with more guided progression”, you might like Hytale (fantasy) or Vintage Story (simulationist).
I’ve looked at Hytale a bit and haven’t made up my mind. I’m a bit worried they’re over-promising for the initial launch, but I haven’t played it. Vintage Story I had not heard about, but it looks *fascinating*. A Minecraft-style survival-horror game. You’ve been able to do that for a while in Minecraft, but something built for purpose sounds very interesting.
Minecraft is currently implementing age verification for using the in-game chat in the UK. I don’t live in the UK, and I haven’t played it in a year or so, but I wonder if my account would need to be verified if they rolled this out to my country. It is more than 18 years old on its own, after all.
Discord is also about to do so globally, after already having one of the companies they hired to do so in the UK leak tens of thousands of identifying documents. It’s not surprising to me that companies are doing these things half baked while waving a flag of “protecting the children”, they are after all always interested in gathering information that would be more valuable to sell to advertisers. I am surprised to see a discussion on Minecraft not touch on this, though.
When it comes to technical Minecraft (the building of automation machines to do things), the SciCraft server was always my favourite. Unfortunately its most popular spokesperson, ilMango, mysteriously stopped posting videos at some point. They had one of the better communities I have seen in a server that does YT videos. So many Minecraft multiplayer servers with a YT prescence focus a lot on selling to each other with shops, making the task of playing Minecraft seem like a job to me. SciCraft members always freely shared resources and helped each other work toward common goals, which seemed to me a much better way to do it.
As for game launchers on Linux, I have been using the Heroic launcher and have had a great experience with it for several years now. Mostly because it integrates so well with the GOG store, and smoothly integrates standalone games.
Discord, I knew about. I’m still waiting for the moment it hits in the U.S. since there has been a lot of push-back. Supposedly many if not all communities in the U.S. will start seeing facial I.D. roll out in early March. Minecraft I had not heard about. I know the U.K. actually passed some legislation while the U.S. is still fighting it out. I’m not that young myself anymore, but the biggest demographic I’ve been arguing with is people older than me who claim to not understand why you can’t just show I.D. While at the same time claiming *they* shouldn’t be required to show I.D. for anything *they* do.
Since I was never that big on accomplishing things in Minecraft I ended up following more personality-based Minecrafters. I know there always seemed to be some drama about who was running which server, what big names they had attracted, etc.
I haven’t come across a reason to try the Heroic launcher yet, but I’ve only heard good things about it.
Age is strongly correlated with not understanding technology, and I think the latter part is what is the causal factor here. People who do not understand how information technology works will see showing ID to Discord or Minecraft or whatever as a similar thing to showing ID to a bouncer at a bar or something (now, being old often means you don’t have to do that, so old people who also don’t understand technology have a double whammy here) and will indeed not understand why this is any different. Educating people one person at a time is exhausting, especially in the current political climate where 90% of the internet consists of biased sources and LLM slop, so it’s always possible to find a “source” that “disproves” whatever you are saying.
I think one of the best things about open source software is that there are multiple solutions for so many things. Even though there are some megaprojects that tend to hoover up talent that might otherwise start alternative projects (systemd, GIMP, FreeCAD) there’s still more variety in free software than in the world of Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and other “industry standard” providers. That there are more than four separate projects that are all making it easier to launch Windows games and software on Linux is a great example of that.